Camping, Revisited
by Cimz
Summary: When Sami shot EJ in the head, Lucas moved to Hong Kong and took his daughter Allie with him. Allie's twin Johnny stayed with Sami in Salem. The twins are reunited at summer camp, which would be nice if Allie hadn't seen The Parent Trap quite so many times. Complete.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer**: All things _Days of Our Lives_ belong to Sony, Ken Corday, and NBC. Some of the plot borrows from the movie _The Parent Trap_, owned by Disney.

**Prologue A (Autumn 2010):**

Cold fire flashed in Sami's eyes as she flung open her door like some avenging angel.

It nearly took Lucas' breath away. Frankly, Scheming Sami had always turned him on. Oh, he had loved Vulnerable Sami and Playful Sami and Motherly Sami. But Scheming Sami was where it had all begun for them.

"Lucas," whispered Sami with obvious surprise. Her expression softened, but her eyes still danced with fear disguised as aggression. Lucas could see the wheels turning in Sami's beautiful, twisted mind.

_What does he want? Why is he here now? How much does he know? What did Will tell him? Is he going to keep my secret? Will his cooperation come at a price?_

"Not that you aren't welcome in my home—I'm always happy to see you—now isn't the best time—"

Lucas smirked. Probably Sami needed to call her pet FBI agent, Riff Raff, and strategize with him. (Unless she had kept Riff Raff in the dark, and was using Lucas' teenage son as her only confidant in her latest disaster.)

Lucas brushed Sami's arm aside and strolled through the door. "On the contrary Sami, this is the only time." He seated himself on her couch.

Sami looked mildly annoyed. "You can sit there if you'd like, but I'm going out."

"I know you're busy," said Lucas with mock solemnity. "Places to go, things to do, grooms to shoot in the head on your wedding night while our son watches."

Sami slammed the door and locked it. In one motion, she crossed the room and fell to the couch beside Lucas.

"Will did tell you," she murmured hoarsely.

"How I know isn't what's important here."

"It is to the person who is going to go to prison if she gets caught," Sami snapped.

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you shot him." Lucas cursed himself inwardly before the words had even tumbled out of his mouth. He didn't want to argue with Sami, especially when, in theory, he had no objection to anything that caused pain to EJ DiMera.

But it was too late. Sami's face was flushed and her eyes were bright. "_You_ of all people are going to judge me for shooting EJ? You do remember that you shot him yourself once?"

It was as good an opening as he was likely to get, so Lucas dove in. "I didn't."

"What do you mean, you didn't? You do remember going to prison? Breaking up with me while you were there?"

Lucas craned his neck so he could see every corner of the room. "Are you sure we're alone?"

Sami shrugged. "Oh, no, I'm not sure. I always discuss my attempted murders where someone could overhear."

Lucas ignored the sarcasm. His eyes locked with Sami's. "You understand," he said slowly, "why I might believe you could overlook something."

Sami heaved an enormous, put-upon sigh. "Check for yourself."

Lucas did.

"Satisfied?" Sami demanded.

Lucas nodded. "Where were we?"

"You said that you never shot EJ." Sami's voice was so flat, so emotionless, that Lucas knew that at some level she already suspected the truth.

"You know I went to military school," Lucas began, easing her into it.

Sami forced a pained smile. "Yes sir, General Horton."

"They make you practice shooting a lot at military school. It's like riding a bike. Once you know your way around a gun, you don't forget. If you know how to shoot to kill, it's like an instinct, it's hard to do it any other way. When I saw Franco holding that fire poker over my mom—"

"Let's skip this part of the story."

Lucas nodded gratefully. "Thank you. Anyway, that shot EJ took that day—it wasn't from someone who knew how to handle a gun. Remember how the cops found that shed full of junk food wrappers and sneaker prints and used ammunition? Like someone who didn't know how to use a gun was teaching himself? Like someone very young was teaching himself?"

"But that doesn't necessarily mean that that person was the one who shot EJ. It doesn't, because you—" Tears began to track down Sami's cheeks. "Please, tell me it was you."

"Remember how Will was so angry with you? Wouldn't speak to you? Thought you'd chosen EJ over him because he'd wanted us to be together for so long?"

"Will would never let you take the fall for something he did. Not even if you wanted to."

"He doesn't know, not for sure. He drank until he blacked out. And sending him to Austin was the best way to make sure he didn't start his life with a whole new DiMera vendetta hanging over him. I told him alcohol does funny things to your dreams." Lucas laughed humorlessly. "At least that part is true. I told him he must have dreamed of doing it himself, after he found out that I did it, and that the booze made the dream so intense that he honestly wondered if he'd done it. And I thought that was it. That was it, until he saw you—"

"Oh, God." Sami clenched her fists and paced the length of the room. "Oh, God."

"Will needs to be away from here. Away from anything that might make him reconsider what's real and what isn't. Away from anything that makes him want to confess. Away from EJ."

"Away from me, you mean."

"No. I don't. But with everything you have going on here, you can't leave. Can you?"

Sami was uncharacteristically silent as she blinked away her tears. "You went to prison for Will. You let the DiMeras try to kill you for Will."

"Of course." Lucas' voice cracked. "I'd do anything for that kid. Anything. From the first time I held him and knew he was mine, knew I should have known all along—I never knew it was possible to love—"

Before Lucas knew what was happening, Sami had curled her hand into his hair and pulled his face down to hers. Her lips brushed his cheek, then his mouth, hard and demanding.

He kissed back like it was second nature. Or first nature.

Then he pulled away.

He hadn't come here for this.

He couldn't get caught up in this, not when his children were depending on him.

"All right," Sami said to the floor. "You want to take Will back to Hong Kong with you?"

"Will and Allie."

"Not Allie! No! It's bad enough that you knew this about Will and you didn't tell me. You can't take my baby."

"You have two other babies who don't have anyone but you."

"I can take care of all my children."

"Usually, yes. But it's going to be one thing after another with Johnny and Sydney, isn't it? The DiMeras will fight you for custody. What if EJ wakes up and remembers? What if he kidnaps them again? What if Johnny keeps getting sick? You missed Allie's great-grandmother's funeral, remember?"

"Johnny—"

"Needed you more. I get that. But it freaked Allie out to be there with everyone crying and saying 'Alice is dead.' She kept saying 'Alice is my name,' over and over."

"I know. And I know because I'm a good mother."

"You're a great mother. I'm not talking about forever. Maybe until summer. You can Skype every day. But Sami, I'm begging you. Let me take my kids out of the crossfire."

Sami's insides turned to water. She had always, always sworn that she would never send her children away. She still hurt when she remembered her father loading her onto a plane for Colorado while Carrie lived wherever she chose.

"You aren't sending them away," Lucas whispered, reading Sami's thoughts. "You're letting them go with their father who loves them more than his own life."

Sami died a little.

"All right," she agreed.

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue B (3 years later):<strong>

Sami didn't wear black.

She didn't wear red, either, out of respect for Sydney and Johnny.

But her stylish blue wrap dress drew a few extra grumbles from the already disapproving DiMeras.

Lexie disentangled herself from the small knot of mourners and approached Sami.

"Are you sure you won't leave the children with me?"

Sami held onto Johnny and Sydney more tightly. "I told you yesterday. They come with me or they don't come at all."

"They need to be with people who are mourning the father that they loved."

"You don't get to decide what they need." She turned her attention to Johnny. "Into the last pew," she directed him.

"At least let them sit with their grandfather!" Lexie protested.

"Stefano has his grandson Theo to comfort him, doesn't he?" Sami's eyes scanned the front of the church. To her bitter amusement, she noticed that Theo was well separated from Stefano. Indeed, Celeste seemed to be shielding Theo from Stefano's sight completely.

"Theo has special needs. You know that! Funerals are stressful, and we need to limit the stimuli around him as much as possible."

Sami rolled her eyes. She sympathized with Lexie; she really did. For one awful month the year before, EJ had had her almost convinced that Sydney was also autistic, that it somehow ran in his family. But after weeks of testing, the doctors had been in no doubt. Sydney wasn't autistic, but the tests _had_ shown that her IQ was off the charts. She often seemed detached, the doctors suggested, because she was often bored.

So doctors prescribed more stimuli for Sydney and less for Theo.

So Sydney was supposed to be Stefano DiMera's plaything—quite literally, since at the age of six Sydney could beat her grandfather at chess one time out of three.

"We'll sit back here," Sami declared firmly. "Johnny—"

But Johnny had long since ceased paying attention. He had darted to the front of the church, attracted by the yo-yo that currently served as some sort of comfort to Theo.

Sami sighed, and dragged Sydney forward to collect Johnny.

The priest chose that moment to begin the service, though, and Sami and her children found themselves trapped in the DiMera pew.

For the next hour, Sami was hard-pressed to keep from laughing. Stefano had obviously placed his bribes well; the priest droned on not only about how well EJ had loved his children but about the "good" he had done the community and how "generous" and "kind" EJ had been to all.

"As kind as his father," the priest concluded, and Sami made a lame attempt to disguise her chortle as a sob.

She could have sworn that the priest winked at her.

After that, they all proceeded to the burial ground. Everyone was given a flower to lay on the coffin, but Johnny and Sydney were given small stuffed animals as well.

"Why don't I get a toy?" Theo demanded.

"Because EJ was Sydney and Johnny's daddy," Abe explained.

"EJ wasn't Johnny's daddy," said Theo. His voice bounced off the surrounding gravestones.

"Of course EJ was Johnny's daddy."

Theo stomped his foot. "No! EJ wasn't Johnny's daddy! EJ wasn't Johnny's daddy! EJ wasn't Johnny's daddy!" His voice grew louder and louder, and he refused to be soothed.

Johnny began to cry, too, though Sami wasn't sure whether it had anything to do with Theo's tantrum. The past week had been tiring and stressful. Johnny hadn't really recovered from Rafe's decision to move across the country with Emily before EJ's death had upset his life further.

"Why don't you think EJ was Johnny's daddy?" Abe asked Theo at last.

"Mommy said so." Theo pointed an accusing finger at Lexie. "Mommy looked at the computer, and Mommy said EJ wasn't Johnny's daddy."

Sami slapped Lexie across the face.

She, Johnny, and Sydney did not stay for the rest of the interment.

* * *

><p>Sami bribed Johnny and Sydney with ice cream to keep them quiet while she called Lucas.<p>

He had to hear the news from her before he heard it from anyone else, but she dreaded seeing the look on his face.

"This is good news," she muttered to herself. "Good news."

"Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?" Lucas' voice made her jump. She hadn't realized that the connection had gone through.

Lucas was shirtless and his hair was still mussed with sleep. It was early morning in Hong Kong; he must have rolled out of bed to answer her call.

"Should I get Allie? I'm not sure she's awake."

"No!" Sami shouted.

Lucas leaned closer to his camera. Sami wished she could reach through her laptop and stroke the side of his face, brush his hair from his eyes, hold him while she told him what had happened.

"Sami, what's going on?"

"EJ's funeral was today," Sami began.

"Sorry I couldn't be there to hand out cigars."

Sami squirmed. "It's more like maybe someone should have given a cigar to you. Seven years ago."

"Sami, it's really early in the morning here. I don't feel like decoding riddles, if that's okay with you."

"Johnny is your son. The DiMeras fixed the test results."

Lucas was silent for so long that Sami wondered why she hadn't taken the precaution of putting the Hong Kong paramedics on speed dial in case the news gave him a heart attack or a stroke or something.

"Lucas?" she tried gently. Then, more frantically, "Lucas?!"

"I'm here." His voice wobbled. "Are you sure?"

"I don't know how I'm supposed to be sure of anything. But, yes, as much as I can be."

"I can't come to Salem right now. If it were just work, that would be different, but this would be a bad time to uproot Allie-"

"It's a really bad time to uproot Johnny, too," Sami's words tumbled over Lucas'. "He just lost Rafe, and then EJ, and it's the middle of the school year..."

"Have you told him?"

"Yes. He knows." Sami decided not to explain that Johnny had screamed that he didn't want a new daddy. "He's really overwhelmed."

"I know how he feels."

Sami's heart constricted. "I wish I could hug you," she told Lucas.

"Hug Johnny for me."

Sami nodded. "Kiss Allie for me."

"I always do," said Lucas, and turned off his computer.

_**TBC**_


	2. Parallel Journey

**Part 1 **

"Are you sure?" Lucas asked Allie. He had wanted to ask her that question dozens of times, but he had held his tongue in deference to her sensitivity. If he asked repeatedly—or even if he asked the wrong time—she might change her mind about going because she thought that he didn't want her to go.

And on some level, he really _didn't _want her to go. If Allie was old enough to travel thousands of miles to attend a summer camp she'd picked out for herself, then how old was he? How long had it been since his marriage to Sami had failed? How long had he let his relationship with Johnny slide by on video-calls, assuring himself that both Johnny and Allie were happy with the current situation?

"I'm sure, Daddy," said Allie with too much sincerity for all of Hong Kong to hold. "I'll miss you," she added. Then she grinned. "But I'd really like to learn to ride a horse. And you said it was important for me to spend time in America, right?"

Oh, he'd said that, all right. He had meant to prepare Allie for a long-overdue visit to Sami. But he and Sami had missed each other's calls, as happened more and more the longer they were apart.

Maybe he hadn't tried as hard as he could have to connect with Sami. He was man enough to admit that he was afraid that Allie might decide to stay in Salem, and of course he would have to let her. A girl needed her mother.

Besides, giving Sami time with Allie meant asking for time with Johnny. He was flat-out terrified of the rejection he would face if he tried to insert himself into Johnny's day to day life. That experience had been bad enough with Will, and Will had been a toddler at the time.

"I did say that," he told Allie, "but I'll miss you all summer."

* * *

><p>"Are you sure?" Sami asked Johnny for the thousandth time. It was always important to ask Johnny a question a thousand times. Sometimes she got a thousand different answers before she got one that really had anything to do with the question. This time, she was happier than usual to keep asking. Eventually, Johnny might realize how much she wanted him to stay.<p>

Sami _really_ wanted Johnny to stay. If Johnny was old enough to attend a summer camp he'd picked out himself, then how old was she? How long had it been since her marriage to Lucas had failed? How long had she let her relationship with Allie slide by on video-calls, assuring herself that both Allie and Johnny were happy with the current situation?

"I'm sure!" exclaimed Johnny as he tumbled over his bed, looking for a toy he wanted to force into his already-stuffed suitcase.

"Won't you miss your sister and me?"

"Yes." Johnny hugged Sami with all of his might. Then he grinned. "But I'd really like to learn archery. And you said it was important for me to travel to new places, right?"

Oh, she'd said that, all right. She had meant to prepare Johnny for a long-overdue visit to Lucas. But she and Lucas had missed each other's calls, as happened more and more the longer they were apart. Maybe she hadn't tried as hard as she could have to connect with Lucas.

She was self-aware enough to admit that she was afraid that Johnny might decide to stay in Hong Kong, and of course she would have to let him. A boy needed his father.

Besides, giving Lucas time with Johnny meant asking for time with Allie. She dreaded the rejection she would face if she tried to insert herself into Allie's day to day life. It had been bad enough when Will had gotten old enough to start asking to stay with his father, and Lucas had only lived across the hall from her at the time.

"I did say that," she told Johnny, "but I'll miss you all summer."

* * *

><p>Lucas and Allie left Hong Kong right on time. Hearth and Home's salespeople had accrued thousands of frequent flier miles that they were happy to bestow on Allie, who they considered a kind of mascot. So Lucas and Allie had a calm, relaxing flight followed by a calm, relaxing drive into upstate New York in a rented limousine.<p>

They stopped outside New York City for lunch and cheesecake. "They make the best cheesecake in the world here," Lucas said. He pointed to the skyline of the big city and told Allie that this was where he had grown up; he told her about how close he and Kate had been, and their special tradition of feeding the ducks in Central Park. Never mind the empty spot in Lucas' memories where his father should have been.

The one thing that bothered Lucas was that he hadn't been able to get in touch with Sami to tell her where Allie would be for the summer. For the past five years, Lucas had made every important decision in Allie's life, but he hated to leave Sami out of the loop completely.

He should have just sent her an email. But an email would have given her an opportunity to Google the place, find fault, and demand that he send Allie to her like he should have done in the first place. If they were face-to-face on their computers, it would be so much easier to make her agree without giving her a chance to argue or change her mind.

It was a lame justification. But years of battles over Will had left him terrified of losing Allie.

Especially since he had lost Will in the end, anyway.

* * *

><p>Sami and Johnny were late leaving Salem. Sydney had taken apart Sami's clock radio, hoping to learn how it worked, and had forgotten to reset the alarm. There had been an uproar at Bo and Hope's house when Sami had gone to drop Sydney off for the day, and the extra delay had meant that Sami and Johnny missed their bus. Johnny was a delightful traveling companion, though, and Sami found herself laughing through their misfortune.<p>

They managed to rent a car and drove a bit too fast toward the camp. They stopped at a diner on a winding back road for lunch. Johnny ordered peanut butter and jelly; it was a particular favorite of his, no matter what else was on the menu. Sami told Johnny about how John had always taken her to the park for peanut butter and jelly on the day after her birthday, just the two of them. Never mind the empty spot in Sami's memories where her mother should have been.

The one thing that bothered Sami was that she hadn't been able to get in touch with Lucas to tell him where Johnny would be for the summer. For the past two years, Sami had made every important decision in Johnny's life, but she hated to leave Lucas out of the loop completely.

She should have just sent him an email. But an email would have given him an opportunity to Google the place, find fault, and demand that he send Johnny to him like she should have done in the first place. If they were face-to-face on their computers, it would be so much easier to make him agree without giving him a chance to argue or change his mind.

It was a lame justification. But years of battles over Will had left her terrified of losing Johnny.

Especially since she had lost Will in the end, anyway.

* * *

><p>The crowd swarming around Camp Canobie didn't phase Lucas and Allie in the slightest. Hong Kong was one of the most densely populated places on the planet; a throng of overexcited children and their parents had nothing on the streets of their home city.<p>

It took a few minutes to find the right line, and while they stood and waited Allie slipped her hand into Lucas'. "I'll be right here to pick you up in four weeks," he reminded her for both their sakes. "And you can call if you want to leave early."

The parent in line in front of them gave Lucas a dirty look. The handbook the camp sent out to parents specifically advised against making such promises. It insisted that some children needed to be forced to tough out the first few weeks of homesickness in order to enjoy the new and varied experiences the camp offered.

Lucas understood the theory, and he hated it.

There was no way he would tell his sweet, sensitive Allie that he was leaving her in a foreign (to her) country and that she could like it or lump it. For reasons beyond her control, Allie barely knew her mother, her siblings, or her extended family. She could never be allowed to believe that her father would abandon her. Not even Will believed that.

Lucas swallowed hard, and Allie looked up sharply. "All right?" Lucas asked her.

She nodded and bit her lip. For an instant, Allie looked so much like Sami that Lucas had to work hard to control his emotions.

Then they reached the front of the line. A uniformed counselor took Allie's bag from Lucas and slapped a fluorescent label on it. _**HORTON, A-9**_. Another counselor grabbed Allie and pushed her toward a group of girls who were standing in a circle clapping their hands.

"Chi dì gïn. Ngoi nei," Lucas shouted over the commotion.

"Love you, too, Daddy!" Allie called back. She didn't look over her shoulder, but Lucas could see that her jaw was set with determination. She would be fine.

It was Lucas who would have a hard time surviving the next month. He was thinking that a lot of work and as much casual sex as possible would be involved.

* * *

><p>"Hold my hand," Sami ordered Johnny when she saw the size of the crowd gathered at the entrance to the camp. Johnny had always been friendly and unpredictable; if he ducked away to talk to someone, as he usually did, it would be almost impossible to find him again. And Sami really didn't want to watch hundreds of people shake their heads at her questionable parenting skills.<p>

Johnny gave Sami a pained look. She sighed. Of course a boy didn't want to make a first impression while holding his mother's hand. Will had reached that stage at about this age, too, but Will had been a steadier, more dependable child than Johnny. She could only hope that the adult Johnny would not be as angry as the adult Will.

"Then you have to stay with me," Sami told Johnny firmly. "If we get separated, I'll have that woman with the bullhorn call for you. That'll be more embarrassing than holding my hand."

"OK," agreed Johnny happily. True to his word, he never left her side during the long wait to check in. He did, of course, get into a burping contest with the boy behind them and a farting contest with the boy in front of them and a discussion of the merits of eating worms with the boy in the next line over.

"We're next. This is it," Sami said, and she brushed her hand over Johnny's shoulder. They needed to start saying goodbye. The process promised to be painful; no wonder Will had always insisted on taking the bus to camp and going to the bus stop with his friends. Will had always been wise beyond his years. (_Wise enough to disown Sami…_)

"We've never been apart for so long." She didn't know why she said it; she did know that she had once said those very words to Will.

Johnny didn't remind her that of course they had been apart before. There had been witness protection during his babyhood, and those horrible months when EJ had had sole custody. Perhaps Johnny didn't remember. Perhaps that would turn out to be more curse than blessing.

Johnny was suddenly, uncharacteristically quiet. He stuck one hand in the back pocket of his jeans. The pose was so reminiscent of Lucas as a young man that Sami was unable to stifle a gasp. Lucas had decided that the nervous gesture looked submissive and had broken himself of the habit long before Johnny's birth; Johnny could never have seen him do it.

It was amazing what genetics could do.

"I love you. I'll miss you," Sami managed around the rising lump in her throat.

"Me too. Bye!" Johnny was off to resume his chat with the worm-eating boy before Sami had finished reminding the camp counselor that Johnny's left eye was a prosthetic, and that special allowances had to be made.

A bright label reading_** BRADY, J-9**_ was attached to Johnny's things; Sami was given a receipt.

She stumbled away, blinded by tears.

She was looking forward to a month of one-on-one time with Sydney; she really was.

But at the moment, she was caught up in the overwhelming sensation of having lost three-quarters of her children.

She nearly walked into an overloaded golf cart that was carrying campers' belongings to one of the cabins on the other side of the field. As she caught her balance, she could have sworn that she saw a bag labeled "Horton." But when she looked back, the bag was gone; the cart was on its way.

"I was imagining things," she told herself. "Missing Will. Seeing Lucas in Johnny."

It would be a long drive back to Salem.

**TBC  
><strong>**_  
>Note:<em>**_ Please excuse my non-existent, computer generated Cantonese. "Chi dì gïn. Ngoi nei," may or may not mean "See you soon. I love you." For purposes of this fic, let's just say it does._


	3. A Reunion

**Part 2**

The first few days of camp were hard, and Allie missed Hong Kong and Daddy a lot. She worried about Daddy, too; ever since Will had gotten so angry about Things You Would Not Understand, she and Daddy had been the whole family. Who would take care of him?

One of the strangest things about camp was how completely she blended in on the outside even though she felt different on the inside. In Hong Kong, almost everyone was ethnic Chinese. It was not considered rude to stare at the blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl even if she barely remembered living elsewhere. Here, she was one of many dressed in a green and white uniform. No one gave her a second glance; no one knew or cared that half the time she thought in Cantonese.

She wasn't sure whether she liked it or not, but she was sure that she was looking forward to playing Capture the Flag. They were going to play boys against girls, which would be interesting; the boys and the girls had separate cabins and she had barely seen the boys since the crowded, chaotic opening ceremony.

One of the other girls—Kate?—strutted up to Allie and handed her a bright red belt to which a long streamer was Velcroed. "Ready to kick the boys' asses?" she asked as Allie looped the belt around her waist.

"More than ready."

"Good. You're on defense."

Allie hesitated. She didn't want to start an argument with the girls she would be seeing constantly for the next month. But Daddy had taught her that if she didn't ask for something, she didn't get it. Being assertive, Daddy called it.

"I'm really fast. I'm better on offense."

Kate flashed a warm smile. "Offense, then."

Allie smiled back.

* * *

><p>The first few days of camp were a relief for Johnny.<p>

He missed Mom and Sydney and the rest of his family; he really did. But it was nice to be away from Mom's tears. She had been on the verge of tears for months, ever since who-knew-what happened with Will. Johnny hadn't noticed at first. Sydney had had to point it out to him. He guessed girls were better at that sort of thing, and Sydney was a damn supergenius to boot.

That was something else he didn't miss—Sydney taking everything apart to see how it worked. It was nice to reach for his videogame and know it would be in one piece. Mom never made much of an effort to stop Sydney's "curiosity;" the only time she had really gotten mad had been the time when Sydney bypassed the security on Mom's laptop to read her email. That would have been the only time that Sydney's explorations would have been really useful. Unfortunately, Mom had caught Sydney before she'd found out what had happened to Will.

Johnny liked the other boys at camp; he made friends easily and always had. He supposed that that was how things balanced out. Sydney got the brains, but he got the charm.

That day's game of Capture the Flag would be his first opportunity to meet the girls at the camp, and he was sure he would like them, too.

Jake, who had the bunk below Johnny's in their cabin, came up behind Johnny and dropped a blue belt around his neck. Johnny laughed and knotted the belt around his stomach.

"We think the girls are going to put their best people on offense," Jake explained. "So..." His explanation of the boys' plans droned on for several minutes.

"Got it," agreed Johnny, even though he wasn't really listening. He never cared about details. He just looked forward to running as hard as he could and capturing as many people as he could. It was all about the moment. Someone else could have the big picture.

The whistle blew, and Johnny and the other boys charged forward. Johnny captured one prisoner after another, and told them jokes as he escorted them to the "jail" the boys had set up in the far corner of their territory. He loved to make people laugh even in the middle of a game. Incidentally, that was the only way he ever beat Sydney at anything; sometimes he made her laugh so hard she forgot to outsmart him.

* * *

><p>Allie, Kate, and a handful of other girls gathered together near—but not <em>too <em>near— their hidden flag.

Most of their team had been captured and put in jail on the boys' side of the field. They were terribly outnumbered.

"I think their flag is on top of the hill," one of the girls said.

"They don't have many people up there," another argued.

"They don't have to. None of us went up the hill besides Allie and me."

Allie breathlessly brushed a lock of sweaty hair out of her face. "I think she's right."

Kate, the captain, nodded gravely, as if Allie's opinion had to be taken seriously.

"So five of us make an attack on the hill, like we know it's there. When they're worried about that, one of us sneaks in to free as many of the people in jail as she can."

Allie hated the idea of charging up that hill again. She was already out of breath. But she knew that it was the only plan that stood even the slightest chance of working when they were so few against so many.

Her legs and her lungs burned as she ran. Two girls sprinted behind her on her left, and two on her right, like they were a flock of geese.

The reaction from the boys was fierce and instant, and Allie was sure that she was right; the boys' flag was on top of the hill.

Halfway up the hill, two of the girls were captured.

Further up the hill, a third girl tripped and was promptly stripped of her red belt. Allie envied her. She thought it might be nice to sit in "jail" and catch her breath.

The fourth girl announced her capture with a frustrated shriek followed by a "go Allie!"

Then Allie could see the flag.

She dodged and feinted. At least three sets of hands were reaching for her, but she was reaching for the flag.

Then she saw his face.

She hadn't seen him in person for years, and they rarely even spoke by phone.

He was reaching for her belt, ready to capture her.

The flag slipped through her fingers.

"Johnny?"

Her belt slipped through his fingers.

"Allie?"

She reached out again, but she didn't know whether she was reaching for the flag or for Johnny. It turned out not to matter, though, because she felt one of his teammates racing up behind her. She jumped to the left, but she landed on the side of her foot, and before she knew what had happened she was rolling down the hill faster than she had run up it.

She scrambled back into her own team's territory before any of the boys could take her belt.

* * *

><p>Johnny and Jake both winced as they watched Allie roll down the hill.<p>

"I didn't touch her—she fell," Jake preemptively told the nearest counselor, who agreed that Allie's fall had been an accident and told Jake and Johnny not to worry.

"Why didn't you take her belt?" Jake asked after a moment. "You had her! She was right there, and she's one of the best on their team."

"She really is," Johnny said. His voice seemed to echo in his own head. He thought that he had gotten away from the crazy women in his family. Allie was the last person he had expected to see.

"Whatever." Jake was oblivious to Johnny's crisis. "We still outnumber them. We should just send everyone over there to get the flag. It has to be in the edge of the woods or we would have found it by now. Near where they were standing right before they ran up the hill, but not too close, you know?"

Johnny's thoughts were elsewhere, but he must have said something about agreeing, because Jake nodded and slapped his back.

When the game started again—the counselors had fussed over Allie and decided that she was unhurt—Johnny followed Jake as he sprinted for the edge of the woods.

Jake was the one who grabbed the flag (it had been nicely camouflaged, so Johnny had run by it without noticing), but he passed it to Johnny just before the girls tagged him out. Johnny had always been a fast runner; apparently that was something he and his long-lost twin had in common. He tore across the boarder carrying the flag, amid much cheering from his teammates.

"Congratulations to Mr. John Brady," cried one of the counselors, and the boys applauded some more. "Why don't you shake hands with Allie, here. She almost had you, didn't she?" The counselor squeezed Allie's shoulder and pushed her toward Johnny. "Allie Horton, this is John Brady."

Johnny laughed. He was pretty sure no one else had ever been introduced to his own twin quite this way.

The counselor looked sharply at Johnny to make sure he wasn't being a bad winner, or making fun of Allie for falling or something. "Johnny, Allie came here all the way from Hong Kong!" the counselor continued. "She lives 8,000 miles away, but you're good at the same thing. Isn't that interesting?"

"You don't know how interesting," Allie murmured under her breath. Now the counselor gave Allie a concerned look.

"It's almost like we're twins," said Johnny, and he reached out to grab Allie's hand like he had been told to do. Her nails were painted green to match her uniform.

"Yeah, almost," agreed Allie. She dropped Johnny's hand and hugged him instead.

Not knowing quite what to do, the counselors led the campers in more cheering, and then suggested that the boys and girls follow Allie and Johnny's example. "Pair up and get to know each other," they commanded.

Johnny and Allie drifted over to a large rock near the edge of the woods. To Johnny's surprise, Allie deliberately stepped around him to make sure she sat on his right side. There were people Johnny had been around every day for years who hadn't learned to do that. Sometimes he corrected them; sometimes he twisted his head so he could see them; and sometimes he was just as happy not to look at them.

Allie, though, was someone Johnny wanted to see.

"Do you think they sent us to the same camp on purpose?" Johnny asked dubiously. He didn't think Mom would be able to keep a secret like that, but he didn't know much about Dad.

"Daddy didn't decide I was going to come here. I did," said Allie. "I mean, he looked at the choices and made suggestions and agreed, but I asked everyone what they thought." She shrugged. "Did Mom pick this one for you?"

Johnny shook his head adamantly. "She didn't even want me to go." He tapped his finger against his fake eye; Allie cringed. "She was worried there would be a problem with my eye. I had to keep telling her how much Will liked summer camp—she's all upset over Will. Hey! Do you know what happened with him?"

Allie sighed. "No. Daddy keeps telling me it's grown-up stuff I wouldn't understand, and he's never like that with me. Will just told me not to worry about it, but then he must have shipped out again, because he hasn't emailed me in a while."

"Same here. Wish I could join the Merchant Marine and just be like, 'sorry, can't talk to you for three months.'" Johnny grimaced. "I said that to Mom and she cried for two days."

"She cries almost every time we Skype," said Allie. That was one of the reasons she didn't really look forward to her calls with her mother. They always left her feeling sad. "Does she ever stop crying?"

"Of course!" Johnny was offended. It was one thing for him to criticize his mom; she was his mom. Technically, she was Allie's mom, too, but Allie wasn't there every day, dealing with the ups and downs of Salem, so she didn't have any business acting like Sami was some idiot who just sat at home and cried. "She just has a really hard time with Will being mad, and I guess you being in Hong Kong. Usually Mom and Sydney and me laugh all the time. Every Friday night we get burgers at Salem Place and talk about everything. We're like the three musketeers."

"That's nice." Allie couldn't help feeling a little upset, even though she was also relieved. It was good that Mom was happy with her other children, but it was sad that she only missed Allie in those rare moments when they Skyped. After all, Mom had another daughter almost Allie's age.

Johnny waited for Allie to say something else, but she didn't. Mom and Sydney never ran out of things to say, and neither did he. It was strange that Allie, his twin, would be so different.

"What about Dad?" Johnny prompted at last. "What's he like when you live with him?"

Allie smiled. "He's the best. He works a lot, but he always makes sure he's home to help with my homework after school. He came all the way over here to drop me off, and he's coming back next month to pick me up. Sunday's the one day he doesn't work at all, and we always make breakfast together. Then we go out or we watch a movie or something."

"So it's just the two of you?"

"Yeah, except when Will used to stay with us more."

"He never… Dad never dated anyone?"

"Oh, he dated about a thousand people, but I never get to meet them because he's never serious." A thrill of fear laced through Allie. Maybe Johnny was asking because Mom was practically married to a man who had a son and a daughter to replace her and Will. "What about Mom? Has she been serious with anyone?"

"No way. She says her kids are enough. There hasn't been anyone serious since Rafe."

"I liked Rafe." She didn't remember him well, but she was fairly sure he wouldn't try to get rid of her. "Why did they get divorced, anyway?"

"Oh, his first wife was supposed to be dead, and then she wasn't, and EJ was around all the time because of Sydney, and Rafe didn't like it, but EJ didn't die until after Rafe left." That had been the worst few months of Johnny's life. Losing two fathers at once had been awful, and for a long time he hadn't had any interest in having a father at all.

"I guess EJ was the one who broke up Mom and Dad, too."

"That's what Will said. Mom doesn't like to talk about it. She just tells me she'll always love Dad as a friend and that they both love you and me and Will."

"Dad says they same thing." Allie rested her chin in her hands. "Mom must be really special, or Dad never would have married her and had us with her. Women throw themselves at him—right in front of me, it's pathetic—and he barely notices. I wonder what would happen if—" She said up straight again. "We couldn't. We have to."

"We have to what?"

"We have to get them back together! That's why neither one of them got serious about anyone else. They miss each other, and I look like her and you look like him, so they're always thinking about each other…" Allie bounced off the rock and gleefully clapped her hands together. "Wouldn't it be fun?"

_**TBC**_


	4. Co-Parenting

**Part 3**

For the first several days after he left Allie at Camp Canobie, Lucas used his non-existent jet lag as an excuse for not calling Sami.

The guilt mounted as Allie's absence reminded him more and more that Johnny was absent as well. Avoiding Sami meant avoiding Johnny. Avoiding one of his children was something Lucas would never, never do.

So early in the morning after a sleepless night, he set his laptop on the kitchen table next to his coffee and listened to the familiar sounds of the connection forming between Hong Kong and Salem.

It would have been wrong to hope that Sami wouldn't be available for an unscheduled chat, so Lucas held off for almost 30 seconds before he began to draft a "sorry I missed you" email.

Then Sami's blonde hair and blue eyes filled his screen.

"Lucas! I, um wasn't expecting you. Did I forget a date?"

"No. I just thought it was about time to check in." Sami's eyes flickered. "Is Johnny around?"

"Johnny is—" Sami looked over her shoulder as if Johnny might be behind her. "Johnny is with some other boys. Playing tag and eating worms or something."

"When is he going to be back?"

"Oh, well, it sounded like it could be a really long game of tag. So, where's Allie?" Sami asked brightly.

Lucas opened his mouth to tell Sami that he was sorry he hadn't discussed it with her beforehand, but that Allie was at summer camp and would be home in a few weeks. Unexpectedly, what he said was, "She's still asleep. She never gets up in the morning because I always end up letting her stay up half the night in the summer."

Sami mock-groaned. "Same old Lucas. I remember when you brought Will home from Africa that time you took him to meet his grandfather, and Will told me he didn't have a bedtime anymore."

"Kid was on vacation. He needed a break."

"Yeah," said Sami softly, and Lucas didn't need to see her downcast eyes or her tiny frown to know what she was thinking.

"This time, he needs a longer break. He'll get past it," Lucas pleaded. He didn't know whether he was trying to convince Sami or himself.

"Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?" Sami asked.

_Damn Sami._ She had no business reading his mind. They hadn't even seen each other for five years.

"Either one of us," Lucas admitted.

Sami's eyes filled with tears and she reached out to touch her laptop screen. For a second, Lucas could almost feel her hand on his face. "I know it feels horrible," Sami said. "Believe me, I know. But we did the right thing. Even if he hates us forever, that's better than what would have happened if we'd told the truth. If we'd let him tell the truth."

"_We_ didn't so anything, Sami. I did. I made that decision and you didn't even find out until you—well, until you tried to finish the job. But he's just as angry at you as he is at me."

"Come on, Lucas, you know why he did it in the first place. And it wasn't because of any choice _you_ made." She forced a fake smile. "You always did try to take all the credit for Will. You don't get to."

"Thank you," he whispered. The fear that he had done more harm than good when he had told the world that he had been the one to shoot EJ DiMera was never far from his mind. Will had accused his parents of brainwashing, among other things, the day he dropped out of school and joined the Merchant Marine. Neither Lucas nor Sami had heard from Will since, although Will did sometimes email Allie, Johnny, and Sydney.

Lucas didn't wish that feeling on anyone, least of all the mother of his children, but sometimes the fact that Sami was going through it too was the only thing that kept him sane.

And here he was lying to her about Allie being asleep in the next room.

They both spoke at the exact same moment:

"Sami, I lied about Allie being asleep. She's at camp, and I know we should have discussed it, and I'm sorry."

"Johnny isn't really playing tag—I mean, he might be—but I don't know because he's at camp and I meant to tell you but I didn't, I'm sorry."

They stared at each other in disbelief, trying to decode one another's words. Then they both began to laugh.

"I was so worried you'd be mad at me," said Sami. "But you can't, because you did the same thing."

"You can't be mad, either," Lucas told her.

Sami made a face. "It can't happen again, though. She's my daughter and I barely know her. I'm just this person she sees on a video call every few weeks. I need… Lucas, I need to see her. I need to be more involved with her life. I can't even send her cookies at camp because I don't know where she is!"

Lucas couldn't resist. "You can't send her cookies at camp because you can't make cookies worth a damn. You don't even have Grandma Alice's recipe."

"It's been years since I lit anything on fire! Years!"

"That's because you're feeding my son takeout three meals a day. You don't even know where the oven is."

"That's not true! It's where I put Johnny and Sydney's art projects when there's no more room on the refrigerator."

Lucas laughed. He was glad that Johnny lived in a home where there was always room for the latest drawing. But he didn't like not knowing where either of his sons were.

"What camp did you send Johnny to? Where is it?"

"It's called—"

But Sami was cut off by a loud shriek, and she was pulled out of Lucas' field of view by a determined set of hands.

"Mommy, there's a spider!" Sydney howled frantically.

Sami struggled to get a grip on Sydney's small shoulders. Sydney was hysterical, and Sydney was never hysterical. Shouting, bouncing, and interrupting were always Johnny's responsibility.

"What happened, Syd?" Sami asked.

"There's a spider." Sydney pointed at her room.

"You love bugs." The last time there had been a spider in the apartment, Sami had been forbidden to kill it because Sydney wanted to watch it weave its web.

"I don't anymore. I think this one might be a black widow. They're poisonous, Mom, you have to get rid of it."

"There aren't any black widows in Salem. Other than maybe Vivian Alamain," said Sami, but she let Sydney tug her into her bedroom.

There was, indeed, a spider nestled in the corner by Sydney's bookcase, but even Sami—who was no bug expert—could tell that it was a garden spider of the kind she had seen hundreds of times.

"That's not a black widow, Sydney."

"Please, get rid of it!" Sydney begged.

Sami shook her head and reached for a tissue to dispose of the spider. "Maybe you're overtired. You feel like going to bed early tonight?"

Sydney shrugged, as if bedtime was not of the least interest to her. "Maybe you miss Johnny?" Sami prompted. "He isn't here to make drama, so you made some yourself?"

Sydney shrugged again.

Sami threw the dead spider in the garbage can, and Sydney gasped. "It could come back to life. Can you throw the bag down the garbage shoot now?"

Sydney was so seldom unreasonable that Sami didn't have the heart not to indulge her now. She put her key in her pocket and tied the garbage bag shut. "I'll be back in a minute. Go say hi to Lucas, if he's still there."

Sydney turned Sami's chair around backwards and straddled it. She looked directly into the camera. "Hi, Lucas!" she said brightly.

"Hi, Sydney." Each time Lucas saw the little girl, he was struck by her resemblance to Allie. Sydney was smaller, and her hair was curly instead of straight, but there was no denying the sisters' similarity.

"What just happened?" Lucas asked.

"There was a spider. I thought it was a black widow."

"I don't think they have black widows in Salem."

"That's what Mom said."

"Your mother is very smart."

"You are, too."

Lucas was taken aback. "Thank you."

"Would you like to play chess with me?" Sydney pushed a button, and a chess board popped up on the corner of his screen.

Lucas was about to refuse—he wasn't a big fan of chess, especially first thing in the morning—but Sydney was Allie, Johnny, and Will's sister. He shouldn't refuse a rare opportunity to spend time with her.

"Sure," he agreed.

The game lasted until he was more than late for work, and Sydney graciously agreed to accept a draw.

"I'm amazed you lasted that long," said Sami as she and Lucas logged off. "She used to beat Stefano all the time."

"Beginner's luck," Lucas guessed. "Goodnight, Sami. Goodnight, Sydney."

"Good morning, Lucas," they chorused.

Lucas' next few days were a non-stop stream of meetings. He didn't have a chance to think much about his chat with Sami and Sydney, or even about how he missed Allie and worried about Will and wondered whether he would ever have a relationship with Johnny.

_"What camp did you send Johnny to? Where is it?"_

"Sami never got a chance to answer," he said to himself.

He pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick text message. It was late at night in Salem, but Sami would reply in the morning.

**Allie is at Camp Canobie in NY state. Johnny?**

A few hours later he got a response.

**Johnny is at Camp Woodlake (Illinois).**

He researched the place a bit before he went to bed. He found no reason to object to it; it seemed a great deal like Camp Canobie, in fact. It was too bad he and Sami hadn't made a plan together. If the twins were going to got to camp for the summer anyway, perhaps they could have chosen the same camp. He wouldn't have objected to sending Allie to Camp Woodlake. Hell, Camp Canobie was much further out of the way than Camp Woodlake; the trip to Camp Woodlake would have been easier, and maybe he and Allie could have gone back to Salem with Sami and Johnny for a few days.

A lost opportunity, then. His life was full of those.

_**TBC**_


	5. Plan in Action

**part 4  
><strong>  
>Cell phones and laptops were not allowed at Camp Canobie, and the counselors thought nothing of confiscating them. The campers lined up for a turn calling home exactly once a week, and it was while they were waiting in line that Allie and Johnny got their brilliant idea.<p>

One of the other campers told his parents that he had changed his mind—he wanted them to come pick him up in person, and he wanted them to stay for the family campout.

Johnny and Allie looked at each other. They didn't need to say anything. They had never felt more like twins.

"It's not too late to sign up for the family campout?" Johnny asked the counselor who was keeping the line in order.

"The deadline is tomorrow. Tell your parents to fax in the form right away."

"Thank you," said Allie, and the counselor looked at her strangely. The counselor didn't know that Allie and Johnny had the same family, and that Johnny was asking for both of them and Allie was saying thank you for both of them. It was amazing how quickly it had become odd that no one knew that Johnny and Allie were siblings—twins.

"I really hope they haven't figured out that they sent us to the same place," Allie whispered to Johnny.

"The plan works either way," Johnny whispered back. "As long as you're sure you can get Dad to come? All the way from Hong Kong? You said he's a workaholic."

"I can handle Dad. No worries. But you're sure about Mom? She's so emotional, and maybe she won't be able to leave Sydney?"

"I can handle Mom. Easy easy easy."

They reached the front of the line; the timer was set for five minutes. Johnny gestured for Allie to go first. He was not at all sure that she was going to be able to convince their father—who sounded like such a suit, not the camping type at all—to join her for burned marshmallows and cheesy ghost stories.

Allie smirked at Johnny and picked up the phone. She dialed Lucas' number, international code and all, from memory.

Lucas answered halfway through the first ring. "Allie-baba! Right on time!"

Allie's heart constricted. She loved Daddy. She knew that the best thing she could do for him would be to reunite him with Mom and Johnny.

"Hi, Daddy," she said, taking care to make her voice extra-cute.

"How's camp?"

"I love it!" she exclaimed. "I like the horses and archery and art class and all the games, but I like the wilderness stuff the best. Using a compass, and setting up a tent, and all those trees… I never saw so many trees, and so many kinds, and all together. I really wish you were here."

"Aw, you don't want your old man spoiling your good time with your new friends."

"I want you to meet my new friends!" She winked at Johnny. "I think you'd like them. Did you know that there's a family campout for two nights after camp gets out? Since you're coming all the way back to America anyway, do you think we can stay? Please, Daddy?"

Johnny pretended to stick his finger down his throat.

"Yeah, of course," said Lucas. "We can do that. What do I have to do?"

"The registration form is on the website. The deadline is tomorrow."

"Excellent. Procrastinating like a normal kid for once." Allie laughed. "I'll do it as soon as we get off the phone."

"Then we better get off the phone now so you don't forget. Love you. Can't wait to see you."

"Can't wait to see you," said Lucas. His voice cracked, and for a second Allie felt bad about not telling him the whole truth. But only for a second. She was doing this for his own good. She didn't know why it had taken her so long to realize that he must still be in love with her mother, but now that she knew it made perfect sense. He would be much better off once she fixed it for him.

She said goodbye, and bowed in Johnny's direction. "Your turn."

Johnny rolled his eyes and theatrically took the phone from Allie. He grabbed a ragged slip of paper from his pocket and read off the numbers to his home phone. (Why would he have had them memorized? He just had to push one button on his cell phone, and it called home automatically. Allie was crazy, memorizing stuff she didn't need to. There was no doubt that she was Sami's daughter and Sydney's sister. All the Brady girls were crazy. That was a good reason for getting his father back into the picture, sooner rather than later.)

The phone rang twice before Sami picked it up.

"Johnny? Johnny, is that you?"

"Hi Mom," said Johnny.

"Johnny! I was afraid I would miss you."

"You didn't." Johnny's heart was pounding. He hadn't expected Allie's performance to be so flawless. If he couldn't hold up his end of the bargain, he would never hear the end of it.

"Are you all right?"

And with that, Johnny had a plan.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He sighed heavily.

"What's wrong? Don't you lie to me, Johnny Roman!"

"It's nothing." Johnny sighed again, and then wondered if two sighs were too many.

"Aren't you enjoying camp?"

"Yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot," said Johnny emotionlessly.

"That's it. I'm coming to get you—"

"No!" Johnny shouted. "I'm just sad it has to end so soon. The other kids' parents are all staying for the family campout, and I know you won't be able to…"

"What? What family campout?" said Sami so excitedly that Allie, from three feet away, stifled a giggle. "Of course we can do that."

"But it's two extra days, and I know we have to get back to Sydney and everything…"

"Sydney will be fine with Bo and Hope for a few nights. You know she doesn't mind."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Thanks, Mom! This is the greatest! We're going to have so much fun! I'm jumping up and down now." And he did jump up and down, making Allie slide to the floor with a peal of laughter.

"You have to fill in the form by tomorrow, though."

"I'll do that."

"Can I talk to Sydney for a minute?"

Sami scoffed. "Are you going to tell her to remind me to fill out the form because you don't trust me?"

"Yes," said Johnny.

"Whatever. I guess I should just be glad that you and your sister get along."

Johnny looked Allie in the face. "I'm glad that my sister and I get along, too." Allie smiled shyly, and saluted Johnny. "Hi, Syd," he said when he heard a click on the line.

"Hi, Johnny."

"I want you to do a special favor for me, because you're my favorite little sister."

"I'm your only little sister."

Johnny shrugged. "That's not my fault. Look, Mom has to fill out a form and send it back to camp by tomorrow. Can you be sure she does it?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm good at doing favors for my big brothers," said Sydney. "Mom is filling out the form now."

"Great. Thank you."

"Good luck."

"Good luck with what?" asked Johnny. Sydney didn't know what was going on. She couldn't have known that he and Allie were at the same camp when they didn't plan it and their parents didn't plan it. "What do you know?"

"Lots of things," said Sydney, and hung up.

Johnny made a face at the phone and whirled on Allie. "How well do you know Sydney?"

"I don't."

He grabbed her by the hand and rushed her down the long hallway, heading for privacy. "I think Sydney knows you're here. You're sure it wasn't her idea for you to come here?"

"I haven't talked to her at all for months. Not even to say 'hi.' If she knows, maybe she saw an email or a text or something."

"Maybe." Johnny wasn't convinced. "I think we're missing something."

"It doesn't matter if we are," said Allie. "Like you said, even if Mom and Dad know, we have to go forward. We lose that first surprise, that's all."

"It would still suck."

"Yeah." Allie had nothing else to say on the subject. "So when Mom first sees me, should I be shy, or—"

"No way. Over the top with the cute and clingy, like you were on the phone with Dad…"

They planned for the rest of the day. For the next week, they planned while they made clay pots, rode horses, identified plants, sang songs, and ate meals.

The campers had one last game of Capture the Flag, but Allie and Johnny were too distracted to help their teams this time. The game they would start playing the next day would be much more intriguing.

* * *

><p>The next morning, half of the campers packed to go home and the other half packed for the family campout. Johnny traded his handheld video game to his bunkmate in exchange for an old school set of walkie-talkies that didn't fall under the camp's cell phone ban. He hated to sacrifice the game—he had brought it to camp because it was his favorite—but he knew that this was for the greater good.<p>

It took some trickery to get one handset delivered to Allie, who was waiting with the other girls, but he managed with a few candy bar bribes. "Operation Parent Trap" was getting expensive.

The walkie-talkies paid off almost immediately when both Sami and Lucas arrived at the parking lots (Allie's area) instead of the group drop-off (Johnny's area). "I see them both!" Allie said. "She's coming from the lower parking lot, and he's behind her coming from the higher one. Get her out of there, or he'll see her."

Johnny ran faster and harder than he had ever run in his life. He was all for his parents running into each other unexpectedly, but it had to happen after they'd already signed in—preferably after they'd reached the campsite. Sooner or later, they would realize that Allie and Johnny had set them up, and they couldn't be allowed to cancel the trip as punishment. The whole beauty of the trip was that for almost 48 straight hours, their parents would be unable to avoid each other the way they had for five years.

Sami swept Johnny into a hug and laughed as he pulled her away from the tangle of parents, campers, and counselors. It wasn't hard for Johnny to kill time—he showed Sami his cabin, now swept clean of most evidence that he and the other boys had lived there for a month; the art studio; the stables; and the rest of the grounds. Sami held his hand as if he were still a little boy, and he let her. It was best that she feel relaxed, happy, and unsuspecting.

Johnny wished that he had some way of monitoring Allie's progress. He knew that Allie would push their father through the registration process as quickly as possible and get him out of the way, but what did "as quickly as possible" even mean? He couldn't very well pull out his walkie-talkie and ask. Even if he could duck away from Sami briefly, Allie would not have ducked away from Lucas at the exact same moment.

Three rapid beeps rang out.

"What was that?" asked Sami.

"My videogame. It does that when the batteries are running out," Johnny lied smoothly. _Thanks, Allie. _"I guess we should go back and register? Maybe it's calmed down some."

They were among the last to sign in, so they did not have to wait in line. The first bus that was going to take the families part of the way to the campground was full, so Sami and Johnny climbed onto the second just before it began to move.

"Perfect timing," Johnny said, and Sami agreed—not that she knew what Johnny had really meant.

Johnny slipped his hand into his backpack and caressed the walkie-talkie. He and Allie had two options now. They could let nature take its course; at some point, Sami and Lucas would have to see each other. Johnny liked this idea best; it was simple, and his and Allie's reactions would be more genuine. Alternatively, they could try to keep their parents apart for a little while longer and then engineer a more "romantic" first encounter. Allie liked that idea best; she didn't want to take the risk of the reunion being interrupted, unpleasant, or (Johnny thought) in any way resembling real life.

They climbed off the bus at the bottom of a hill; the hike to the campground would take an hour and a half.

* * *

><p>Allie looked around anxiously. She had no idea where Johnny was. Maybe he hadn't even made it onto the bus? She knew that she had cut it close, but she didn't think she had cut it <em>that<em> close.

"Who're you looking for?" asked Lucas. "One of your friends?"

"Yeah," agreed Allie, because that made sense and wasn't completely untrue. "I'm afraid they didn't get on the bus."

"Have your counselors ever left anyone behind before?"

"No." But she spun on the spot, looking and looking until the whole group was moving forward up the trail.

The woods were exotic to Allie; there just wasn't much undeveloped space in Hong Kong. But she was too nervous and excited to enjoy much of the walk.

The trail lurched steeply upward right before they reached the campground. Even the grown men and women had trouble scaling the last few feet. Some of the children were being handed from one parent below to the other parent above, or were getting piggy back rides.

"Want some help getting your girl up?" another father asked Lucas. But before Lucas could answer, Allie scrambled up the ledge under her own power. If she could run up the Capture the Flag hill, she could do this, and this time she wouldn't take a ridiculous fall in front of everyone.

Lucas laughed and applauded. "Apparently not," he told the other man with obvious pride that made Allie glow inside. For the first time, she forgot about Johnny and just relished the day she was having with her father.

Naturally, that was when it happened.

Lucas joined the other man in offering a hand to those who were following behind them.

He pulled four or five people into the clearing and began to get into a rhythm. The fresh air felt good in his lungs; he was thrilled to be around Allie again and see her so lively and confident. This camping trip was the best idea Allie had had in a long time… and being his daughter, she had had some damn good ideas in her life.

Lucas reached for the next woman's hand; a jolt of energy slipped up his arm and their fingers touched. Without knowing why, he grabbed her around her waist and swung her up to his level. He began to apologize; he had meant to hold her hand to help her balance as she climbed, not toss her in the air.

Then his eyes met hers. It couldn't be. _It couldn't be._

"Sami?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Lucas?"

**_TBC_**


	6. Another Reunion

**Part 5**

Without thinking—because when had thinking ever done her much good in the long run, anyway?—Sami flung her arms around Lucas.

Later, there would be time to sort out how Lucas had gotten here. Now, she was just happy to be with her friend.

"It's so good to see you!" she told him. She had suspected from their Skype conversations that his body was as hard, solid, and strong as always, but a touch confirmed her suspicions. She detected a faint scent of hotel soap mixed with sweat—a smell that might be awkward or unpleasant on a stranger, but that pleasantly warmed her insides on Lucas.

After a long moment, she realized that a dozen parents and campers were staring at them. Lucas and Sami were blocking the entrance to the campground, after all.

With regret, she detached herself from Lucas. "Sorry," she told their audience.

Lucas tugged her out of the way. "She just believes in a proper thank you when someone gives her a hand," Lucas added. He mock-glared at the woman who had been walking just in front of Sami for most of the hike. "Why didn't I get a hug from you?"

The woman chuckled and blew Lucas a kiss; her husband quickly shuffled her off, along with their son.

"Lucas," Sami repeated. She had missed saying his name.

"What are you doing here?" Lucas asked.

"I came to pick Johnny up from camp. At the last minute he decided he wanted to take the family trip."

"But you told me he was in Illinois somewhere. I got your text."

Sami had never sent a text like that. She was not in the habit of lying to Lucas about their son's whereabouts—or at least, she hadn't been since Will was in kindergarten. "I didn't—"

Her explanation was cut off by a cry of "Mommy!" There was a swish of a long, blonde ponytail, and then Allie was in her arms.

Sami fought to catch her breath. Of course, if Lucas was here, Allie must be too. "Oh, Allie," she whispered. At first she couldn't say anything more. She loved all of her children equally; after growing up in Carrie's shadow, she could never have done otherwise. But as much as she loved Allie, she didn't _know_ Allie—not the way she knew Johnny and Sydney and Will.

She could never quite think of Allie, who was unquestionably the most sensitive of her children, without worrying that Allie resented her. _You kept Johnny and Sydney, but not me. You fought for Johnny and Sydney, but not me._

And here was Allie cuddling against her, calling her "Mommy" (neither Johnny nor Sydney had done that for years), and radiating contentment.

It was the best day Sami had had in a long, long time.

She cupped Allie's chin in her hands. "You've grown so much. You're so beautiful."

"She looks like you," said Lucas, as he reached out to tug Allie's ponytail. "Lucky for her."

Sami laughed a little too loudly; the last five minutes had been overwhelming. She smacked Lucas' shoulder with the back of her hand. "Stop it. Johnny looks just like you, and I'll have you know he is by far the handsomest boy in his entire class."

"That's true," agreed Johnny, who had appeared in front of them.

"Damn right, it's true," said Lucas nonchalantly, as if this weren't the first time he had seen his son in person for years. Lucas and Johnny slapped each other five. "Now that your mother mentions it, we _are_ both incredibly good looking."

"Maybe we should roll around in the dirt, or something, so the other families don't get jealous," suggested Johnny.

Lucas appeared to give the matter serious consideration. "Maybe after we set up the tents. We don't want to miss our chance to get a good spot, right?"

"Right!" agreed Johnny enthusiastically. He grabbed one tent, and Lucas grabbed another, and the two of them tore off across the campground.

"What should we do?" Sami asked Allie. Her heart pounded at the idea of being alone with the girl. She honestly hoped that Allie knew what they should be doing, because Sami could barely remember her own name, let alone how to get the most out of a school camping trip. Being in her long-lost daughter's presence did that to her.

"Help build the fire so we get a good place when we're cooking. We need to save the best sticks for roasting marshmallows and hot dogs, too."

While Sami and Allie worked and talked—Allie was so grown up!—Sami kept one eye out for Lucas and Johnny. Father and son worked together like they had done this a thousand times before. It seemed to be no big deal to them.

Eventually, Allie noticed that Sami was staring and followed her gaze. Johnny looked up, and all of a sudden bounded toward them. He plucked the sticks from Sami's hand and pointed at the tents.

"I'm too short to put up the tents. You should go help Dad," Johnny ordered.

Sami hesitated. She didn't want to leave Allie's side, not even for a moment.

"Go!" encouraged Allie. "I don't want to sleep in a tent a nine-year-old put up, anyway."

"Haven't they been teaching you that kind of thing since you got here?"

"OK," said Allie. "I don't want to sleep in a tent _that_ nine-year-old put up."

"Hey," said Johnny, but there was no bite to it.

"Go help Dad," Allie pouted. "Someone needs to."

Sami's body twisted with indecision. "All right," she said at last. "Don't hit each other with those sticks."

As soon as Sami's back was turned, Johnny poked Allie with a stick. "_That_ nine-year-old?"

Allie shrugged. "I had to say something to get her over there." She grinned. "And now they probably won't come down for the cookout. Did you see them when they saw each other? The way he picked her up before he knew he knew who she was? The way she hugged him? The way they couldn't stop looking at each other? I was _so_ right about this."

"And who was right about letting them see each other whenever? Not trying to force something?" Johnny slapped his stick against Allie's leg. "Oh, yeah, that was me."

"But what about—Dad said Mom texted him that you were at some other camp."

"Yeah. Good timing stopping that."

"So you think it was Sydney?"

"Must have been."

"Why would she even want to?"

Johnny shook his head. "Don't try to figure out how Sydney's mind works. It's a waste of time. Come on, ghost stories tonight after the cookout. I need your help."

* * *

><p>"Damn it," Lucas muttered.<p>

He had thought things were going well with Johnny. They were joking and talking, and the tents were even getting put together without a hitch.

Then Johnny had vanished with no explanation.

It had been a long time since Lucas had tried to hard to impress someone, and even longer since he had failed. What the hell had he done to make Johnny take off? Or was the kid just being a kid? Allie would never have run off without explanation, but that didn't mean Johnny was the same.

He willed himself to focus on his work. Johnny definitely would not be impressed, and start thinking of his dad as a good guy, if the tent fell down in the middle of the night. (Lucas could have told Allie or Will "You should have stayed here and helped, and it might not have happened," but he wasn't going to say anything remotely negative or not fun to Johnny. It was the stereotypical reaction of a divorced parent, he supposed. He didn't care.)

"It won't stay up," he said with annoyance.

"Funny, you never used to have that problem with me," a sultry voice said.

He turned in shock, letting go of the rope he'd been holding and letting the tent fall to the ground.

Sami burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, Lucas, but—your face!"

Lucas folded his arms and stared hard at Sami; this only made her laugh more.

It took everything he had not to laugh, too. Sami's laughter was magically contagious, and the joke had been kind of funny. But he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction, not when he had raised a perfect angel who loved her mother in Allie, while Sami had apparently raised Johnny not to be able to tolerate Lucas' company for more than ten minutes.

Sami managed to stop gasping for air, although her face was flushed and her eyes were bright. (Still gorgeous more than twenty years after he'd first seen her.)

"All right, I'm sorry. I mean it this time. That was inappropriate."

"Yes, it was," said Lucas as primly as he could. "A mother of three soon-to-be teenagers should conduct herself with more decorum. They need to learn that a lady is always demure and polite."

Sami's jaw dropped. If Lucas was serious, she was going to sue for custody of Allie, and she was going to win by any means necessary. "Are you kidding me?"

Lucas' dark, stern eyes stared into hers. "Yes," he finally said. "I'm kidding you."

It was Lucas' turn to laugh, and he relished the opportunity.

"Lucas!" Sami gave him a little shove. "All right, I earned that one."

"You always gave as good as you got. I always liked that about you."

Sami wasn't sure what to say to that. Just saying that she had always liked so many things about Lucas, too, seemed overwhelming, especially now that she was trying not to get lost in her memories of arguments and laughter that had ended with the two of them in bed. Or on the couch. Or on the floor. Or up against the wall.

"Johnny said he wasn't tall enough and sent me up here to help," was what she ended up saying.

Relief flooded through Lucas. "Oh. He didn't say why, he just ran off. I thought I'd—I thought he'd just had enough with being around me."

"No," said Sami in the gentle, completely-sympathetic-without-shaming tone she usually saved for their children in a moment of adolescent angst. "That's Johnny. He doesn't focus very well. He's getting better, but I've spent the last nine years knowing I can't blink or he'll disappear."

"Right," agreed Lucas. "I knew that."

Sami stepped closer to Lucas so their bodies were almost touching. "It'll be okay. You know each other better than you think." So easy to say about Lucas and Johnny. So hard to believe about herself and Allie.

"Right," said Lucas again, and he made a strangled sound in his throat that made blood rush to Sami's lips. Before she knew what she was doing, she stood on her toes to kiss Lucas. At the last instant, she managed to turn her head just enough so that the kiss fell beside his lips instead of on them.

A kiss on the cheek for a friend who was worried about his son. That was totally acceptable.

She scrambled to the ground and picked up the rope at her feet. "So what were we supposed to be doing?" she asked hastily.

Lucas began instructing her just as hastily.

The tent snapped into shape; the other followed suit.

"That looks right," said Sami as she appraised their work. "What's the worst that could happen? They fall down? That happened when we went on that camping trip with Will, and we survived. Barely."

"I don't think there'll be any tigers this time. But try not to fall into any pits and hit your head."

Sami shivered. She remembered that pit. She remembered her intense fear of the tiger; that had grown almost comical over the years. She remembered, too, her intense desire for Lucas… the desperate kisses, the daily struggle of denying her feelings. Time hadn't smoothed over those memories.

"Why did it have to be another camping trip?" she asked. Lucas had made it perfectly clear nine years ago that they would never have a future. He was not going to get over her betrayal with EJ, and Sydney—as precious as she was—would always be a reminder of that night.

Now she was in the same place she had been so many years before. The chance of sharing a life with this man who had fathered her children and been her best friend was taunting her from somewhere just out of reach.

It wasn't that she sat at home in Salem and missed Lucas; of course not. She had married Rafe, after all. Johnny and Sydney alone made for a very full, very fulfilling life.

But she had never wanted to divorce Lucas. She had never wanted to break up with Lucas. Their lives had been so close to perfect, and seeing him again made her raw all over. No wonder they hadn't visited each other in years.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," said Lucas. "None of those things that happened on Will's school trip are going to happen this time. No crazy DiMeras, no tigers, no serial killers, no parents staring at us with CPS on speed dial. All we have to do is hang out with Johnny and Allie."

Lucas had mistaken Sami's sadness for fear. It was just as well.

"I know," she said. "You're right. I'm sure Allie and Johnny are saving hot dogs for us. Let's keep them from setting everything on fire."

* * *

><p>Dinner was pleasant; as Sami had predicted, it involved a lot of keeping the twins out of the flames. When the last s'mores were eaten, the children took turns telling ghost stories.<p>

Lucas and Sami were unsurprised when Johnny volunteered; Johnny loved an audience, and audiences usually loved Johnny back.

"A long, long time ago, before I was even born," Johnny began, "there was a very bad man. He lied and he cheated and he stole. He hurt people. I don't want to scare anyone, but…" Johnny paused dramatically. "He killed people. He tortured them. He kidnapped them. He especially liked to kidnap little children."

The audience gasped obediently.

"The man died, and no one was very sad. They felt like they should be sad because someone was dead, but really they were happy. They were relieved that they didn't have to be afraid anymore.

"But the man was so evil that he wouldn't let dying stop him. He decided to come back as a ghost to haunt everyone who had fought against him when he was alive, especially the children he'd kidnapped—two boys and two girls, who had gone home to their family after the man died.

"The oldest boy was the easiest. The ghost came into his room like a cold wind and swept him out to sea. Since he was almost grown up, his parents thought he had just gone off the make his fortune. They never suspected the ghost.

"The first girl was next. The ghost stood over her bed at night and gave her terrible dreams. Sometimes she had the dreams even when she was awake. She was afraid all the time, afraid of everything. So her parents—thinking that it was their own idea—gave her a pill to help her sleep. And of course, the ghost kept her asleep. She didn't wake up.

"The next boy knew what had happened to his brother and sister, so he was ready to fight the ghost. He fought with everything he had, but the ghost stabbed him in the eyes and left him blind so he couldn't fight any more.

"And the baby girl hid. She didn't remember anything from before the ghost started to haunt her family, and she didn't know how to fight.

"One day her parents found her hiding behind a curtain. They asked her why she was hiding, and told her that she was their only hope, since they had had such bad luck… one son lost, one son blind, one daughter asleep forever. The baby told them that she could not be their hope. The ghost had come to her in the night and said that she belonged to him.

"'We will never let the ghost have you,' her parents promised. 'He took my brothers and sister and he will take me. He loves me most of all. He told me so,' she answered.

"Her parents saw that she believed it, and so they stayed with her in her room that night, hidden in the darkest corner. Of course, the ghost still saw them when he arrived. He was surprised to see them, and he hesitated. That was all the time it took for the baby to jump from her bed and run from the room.

"'STOP!' roared the ghost. 'I have always loved you most of all, and I will give you all the magic in the world if you will be mine again.' 'Prove it,' said the baby. 'Give me enough magic to do one thing.' And her parents began to cry, thinking they would lose their last child. The ghost sent a sparkly, misty breeze toward the baby. She caught it and ran into her blind brother's room. She lay the mist across his eyes, and he woke up able to see again.

"He looked at the baby, and then he looked at his other sister, the one who never woke. He kissed her cheek, and there must have been some magic left, because her eyes opened. She looked at her baby and her brother, and then she called for her older brother.

"The magic was getting stronger, because far out in the ocean he was able to hear her and find his way home. They all went back into the baby's room, where the ghost was fighting their parents.

"The ghost was surprised to see them, especially the oldest. 'I thought I was rid of you. But I sent you away once and I can send you away again.'

"But the children told him no. He could kill them all right there with their parents, but he would not separate them anymore. They all stood together and fought the ghost, and the baby siphoned off more and more of his magic. He got so weak that he vanished.

"The family was happy to be together, but they stayed alert. Because the thing with a ghost is, they never really die. They can always come back if you aren't careful."

Johnny stood up and took a bow.

Most of the campers and their parents clapped politely.

Sami and Lucas were too stunned to join in.

_**TBC**_


	7. First Night

**part 6**

Lucas and Sami were unsurprised when the twins scurried into one tent, leaving their parents to share the other.

They changed without embarrassment. There was nothing new to see, and they were both well aware that neither had ever found fault with the other's body. Physical attraction had never been a problem for them.

"After everything we that happened with Will wanting us to be together, we should have expected this. I guess I kind of did," said Sami without preamble. It had been clear for hours that her meeting with Lucas was no accident, and Johnny's unsubtle performance at the campfire had only confirmed her suspicions. Allie and Johnny had decided that their parents should reunite, and they had taken action.

"I have to hand it to them, though. Pulling off getting all of us to the same place without us having a clue. Unless you really did lie about where Johnny was?" Lucas fumbled around in his sleeping bag and came up with a phone. It wasn't getting a signal, but he was still able to flip through texts he had received previously. He handed the phone to Sami.

Sami read the text and returned the phone. "So Sydney's involved, too. I heard her tell Johnny 'good luck' when he called to ask if I could come on this trip. I thought she just meant 'good luck not having Mom embarrass you by falling off the mountain or something.'"

"That would also explain her sudden desire to play chess with me the first time I asked you where Johnny was."

Sami groaned. "And the sudden fear of spiders that day." She felt sick and made an effort to control her breathing. She wasn't about to try to seduce Lucas; she was well aware that that phase of their life was over. But she didn't want to throw up or hyperventilate in front of him, either. She still needed him to think that perhaps he had missed out when he'd dumped her and refused to give their family one more chance.

"Sami?" The concern in his voice was palpable. Naturally, she couldn't hide anything from him. She'd never been able to do that for long. "Sami, what's wrong? You OK?"

"Fine," she managed, and even though it was a lie at least she'd gotten her breathing under control.

"We got through this with one kid. We can get through it with the others."

"I know," said Sami. "Of course we can. That's not what I'm worried about."

"What is?"

Sami twirled her hair around one finger. "You know, with each of the kids I worry about something different. I worry that Will can't trust, that he doesn't know what it's like to feel really confident and secure. I worry that Allie will think her mother abandoned her. With Johnny, I worry about the cancer coming back. But with Sydney… with Sydney I worry that she's going to take over the world and never care about anyone but herself. It's my own fault for ever letting there be a chance one of my children would have DiMera DNA. I know that. But when I watch her, so sure she's smarter than everyone else, not really connecting with people the way Johnny does…"

"I'm pretty sure no one connects with people the way Johnny does. Did you see him playing to the audience when he told that story?"

"Yeah, Johnny is special that way. But Sydney—the chess, the lack of respect for our privacy, the manipulation—you don't think she's getting that straight from her grandpa Stefano?"

Lucas chuckled. "Except for the chess fetish, I think she gets that from you. Remember that time you set all of the clocks in Austin's apartment back so he wouldn't be on time to meet Carrie?"

"That was a thousand years ago."

"Remember Will, coming up with reasons why we had to spend the night together? This stuff the twins are doing now? Sydney isn't doing anything different. I'm not her father and she doesn't know me very well. But she's taking part in this because she wants what Johnny wants, or she wants what she thinks is best for you. That doesn't sound like a little girl who doesn't care about other people, or who wants to hurt them."

"I don't know. I'm never sure with her. I always think everything could be a sign that the DiMera is coming out in her. I have to."

"She's half yours," said Lucas quietly. "More than half. She's part you, and part Roman and Marlena, and part Shawn and Caroline to fight off that DiMera."

"It's a nice idea. But come on, Lucas, even you don't believe that. You ran in the other direction when I asked you to be Sydney's father, before she was even born. You broke up with me, you kept Will and Allie from–"

"Is that what you think?" demanded Lucas. He kept his voice quiet, since the twins weren't far way, but his anger was unmistakable. "Have you actually convinced yourself, in your rewritten history, that that's what happened? When I thought Allie and Johnny were EJ's children, I agreed to raise them as my own. We broke up because you divorced me to marry your rapist, and when I came home I found you in bed with him."

"And you conveniently forget to mention that you dumped me first! We weren't together when Sydney was conceived because you told me to move on!"

"I also asked you stay away from the guy who tried to kill me and our children. The guy who drugged you so his father's goons could rip Allie and Johnny out of your stomach and cut them up for spare parts? The guy who told you'd better hire more bodyguards for Will unless you divorced me?"

"Once you broke up with me, you didn't have a say in who I saw or didn't see. Either we were together and you had a say in my romantic life, or we weren't and you didn't."

"_Romantic_." Lucas scoffed. "Can't have been that romantic. You jumped the hell out of that bed and chased me down the hall, and a month later when you came up pregnant you couldn't figure out how it happened."

"OK, romantic was the wrong word. _Sex life_, then. Is that better?"

"More accurate. No less disgusting."

"I disgust you, now?"

"If you're going to twist my words around like that, we aren't having this conversation." Lucas slumped into his sleeping bag and turned to face the wall of the tent.

"We still have to have a conversation about what we're going to say to the twins."

"I'll tell Allie that her mother is a pain the ass and we're better off without her," said Lucas idly. "You can tell Johnny whatever you want."

Before the words were out of Lucas' mouth, Sami had scrambled from her side of the tent and jumped on top of him. Her legs straddled his waist; she used her hands to hold down his shoulders and force him to look at her.

"You wouldn't dare," Sami hissed. "I swear to God, Lucas, if you even think about saying that to Allie, this will be war. I went through that with Johnny. When Johnny had cancer, EJ told him every day that I didn't want to be with him and I didn't love him anymore. Luckily Johnny's got a head like a rock and it didn't take. Doing that to a sensitive girl like Allie—especially at this age—if you're that willing to hurt her—"

Lucas' whole body snapped to attention. He ripped on arm free and covered Sami's mouth with his hand; the rest of him rolled over so that she was beneath him. His sleeping bag was between them and restrained his legs, so Sami could have escaped easily.

But she didn't.

Infuriated as she was that he was holding his hand over her mouth, angry as she was that he would even sarcastically threaten to say something so horrible to Allie, she found the idea of being pinned beneath Lucas this way intriguing. Every muscle in her body tensed with anticipation and memory; her blood flowed so quickly she could feel it. She wondered if Lucas might be having those same thoughts.

She wriggled her hips as if she were trying to free herself, but she made sure she didn't move too fast or too hard. She had to create just enough friction. She had to get herself into just the right position to see exactly how much of Lucas she could feel through the sleeping bag.

And there it was. She smiled against his hand and looked him straight in the eye so that he would know she knew. She pursed her lips against him like a kiss.

Warily, he removed his hand, then pulled himself and the sleeping bag away from her.

"Like I said this afternoon," Sami whispered. "You never had that problem with me."

Lucas scowled. "It's a natural response when a crazy person tackles you. Same thing would have happened if a grizzly bear came running out of the woods and attacked the tent."

"OK," said Sami innocently.

"It's true! Like when you dream, it doesn't matter what you're dreaming about—"

"I believe you," said Sami with much too much fake sympathy.

"Just don't yell, OK? The kids will hear us. They aren't very far away. And I apologize for what I said—I would never really say that to Allie."

"I know," admitted Sami.

"But maybe… maybe because of the weird situation it would be better if you talked to Allie and I talked to Johnny. You could invite Allie to move in with you, and I'll invite Johnny. That way they'll know that it's not them that we're rejecting. It's that you and I don't work as a couple."

"And maybe they'll realize that it wouldn't work out for them as perfectly as they think. Neither one of them wants to changes schools and move halfway around the world so we could all be together. That's part of the reason we have the solution we do."

"I guess that's a plan, then," said Lucas.

They both settled down to sleepless nights.

* * *

><p>After an eternally long pause, Allie turned off the walkie talkie. Its mate, of course, was planted in the other tent, in the bottom of the first aid kit no one would end up using.<p>

"We have to call their bluff. Dad asks you to come live with him, you say yes. Mom asks me to come live with her, I say yes. If he asks if you're worried about school, tell him what a unique educational opportunity Hong Kong is. And I'll tell Mom that I'm sure I won't have to worry, going to a school where my sister already is."

"And your brother. Because you won't know I'm saying I want to live in Hong Kong at the same time."

"Good catch."

"What if they just say OK, and take us back to the wrong places?"

"They'll have to say OK, won't they?" Allie thought about it. "We have to make them be the ones to back out. Make them see that you and Mom are a package deal, and so are Dad and I. Do you think you can do something to freak Dad out so much he'd have to beg Mom for help?"

"I can freak anybody out." Johnny tapped his fake eye in a way that always made Allie sick to her stomach. "Can you get to Mom?"

"Yeah. I think so." She wrapped her arms protectively around herself and shivered in the night air. "Did you know that EJ tried to chop us up when we were babies?"

"No." Johnny really didn't want to talk about this.

"Did he—did he really tell you Mom didn't want you when you were getting surgery on your eye?" Allie pressed on.

"Yeah."

"Weren't you scared?"

"I was five years old and I had my eye removed. Of course I was scared," said Johnny irritably. "Why do you think Mom let Dad take you 8,000 miles away? Things were bad. When EJ got done, there wasn't enough left of her for of all four of us."

"I'm sorry," whispered Allie.

"Not your fault," muttered Johnny.

All night Allie dreamed that she watched as Johnny and Sydney were cut into pieces. Johnny dreamed that a doctor- who looked suspiciously like Stefano- removed his remaining eye with a melon baller.

_**TBC**_


	8. Plan Continued

**part 7**

Lucas and Sami nearly called off their plan to offer new living arrangements to the twins before breakfast. The dark circles beneath Allie's eyes were almost frightening, and Johnny was rambling incoherently in the way he only did when he was truly exhausted.

"Did you stay up all night playing games?" Sami asked with forced cheer. This was the first family time the twins had had with both parents since their babyhood. Sami wanted it to be wonderful for them. Instead, she and Lucas were going to crush their hopes—better in the long run, but awful in the short run.

"Something like that," said Allie.

Lucas looked sharply at his daughter. "Feeling all right?"

"Terrific!" said Allie. She sounded roughly as cheery as Sami.

Lucas and Sami made call-it-off gestures to each other over the twins' heads. But the twins seemed to look a little more lively as breakfast wore on, and when the counselors announced a scavenger hunt—boys against girls in pairs of two—Sami and Lucas took it as a sign. This time, they nodded solemnly over the twins' heads as they took off into the woods with their lists.

* * *

><p>"Pinecone, maple leaf, caterpillar, earthworm, red pebble, black pebble, birch bark, brown mushroom," Lucas read. "We got this, right?"<p>

"Right!" Johnny agreed enthusiastically. They found everything but the red pebble and the brown mushroom in short order.

"We make a good team, don't we, Dad?" Johnny asked as the two of them forced the caterpillar back into their paper bag for the fourth time.

Lucas' heart melted. He had to make the offer now, and he knew it, but the fear of rejection was almost overwhelming.

He had been sober for over six years, and in that time nothing had ever made him fantasize about the numbing prosperities of alcohol more than his current fantasy of a Johnny-Will hybrid informing him that he had no place in his sons' lives.

There was no alcohol around, anyway, so Lucas steeled himself to begin the conversation.

_We wouldn't even be in this position, with the twins trying to play Parent Trap, if I had just asked for Johnny to come visit in the past. At least, we wouldn't have had to deal with it on the fly on some family vacation we never planned_, he reminded himself.

"We make a great team," Lucas agreed. He drank in the sight of Johnny's curly hair, quick grin, and constant movement. "In fact, I was thinking. Well, your mother and I were thinking. We've discussed this. So?"

"So…?" Johnny prompted. He gave Lucas a my-dad-is-a-little-slow-but-I'll-humor-him look which Lucas had always thought was unique to Will.

Damn it, boys were hard. Who would have thought that Sami Brady's daughters would be easier than her sons?

"So, I was wondering—we were wondering— if you'd like to try living with me. We could get to know each other better, and Hong Kong is a great place for a kid. There are so many opportunities—"

"You want me to leave Mom?"

"We understood that you probably wouldn't want to," Lucas rushed on. "You have your friends and your school and your life in Salem, just like Allie has hers in Hong Kong. We don't have a traditional family and neither one of you really wants that to change. But we wanted you to know that you are so welcome—that I would love to have you with me, and that even though your mother would miss you, she'd let you go."

"Really?"

"Really." Lucas knelt down to look Johnny in the eye. "I love you and I wish we could spend more time together."

"OK," said Johnny. Then he bolted down the hill, shouting "there's a stream down there—I bet there's a red pebble."

Lucas stumbled after Johnny. "OK, what? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," said Johnny, who had hopped over the stream to search through a sandy bank on the far side, "that I'm a kid. I need my dad. So I think I should come live with you in Hong Kong right away. FOUND IT!"

Lucas was too stunned to question that Johnny was more excited by the prospect of finding a rock of a certain color than the prospect of moving around the world.

* * *

><p>Sami and Allie reviewed their list together.<p>

"Earthworm and caterpillar." Sami wrinkled her nose. "Too bad your sister Sydney isn't here. She'd have those in no time. She loves bugs, always knows where to find them."

Allie sighed. "Sometimes I feel so sad that I don't know Sydney better. I mean, we talk on Skype, and I remember when I was little I used to call her 'my baby,' but… she's my only sister and we've never fought over the bathroom, or had a tea party or anything."

Sami smiled grimly. She hadn't expected Allie to give her such a perfect opening so quickly. "I always wanted you and Sydney to be close," she told Allie. "Your Aunt Belle and your Aunt Carrie and I did those things and I want you to have them too. More the tea parties than the fighting. So I guess this is as good a time as any. You're getting older now, and you've been away from me, and from your own country, for most of your life. And your dad and I discussed this and we think… we were wondering if maybe you thought it was time for you to come live with me?"

Allie bit her lip, and her eyes widened. She wandered over to large tree and slid down its trunk to sit on the ground. Sami hasted to sit beside her; the tree trunk was large enough so that they could both lean against it.

"Are you all right?" Sami asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just wasn't expecting that."

"I know. I'm sorry, Sweetie, I didn't mean to spring it on you. But you mentioned wanting to know Sydney better and I—I couldn't wait to tell you it was a possibility. I really miss you when you're gone. I hate surviving on Skype, and pictures."

"Johnny says every Friday night you and him and Sydney go out for burgers and you laugh and laugh and are like the three musketeers." Sami heard the implied criticism; she'd made that criticism enough when she'd been Allie's age. _You're doing fine without me. You're happy with the children you kept, the ones you love the most._

Sami trailed her finger along Allie's chin. "Have you ever read _The Three Musketeers_? Or seen the movie?"

"No."

"Well, if you had, you'd know that there are actually four of them, not three. I love your brothers and your sister, but it's never complete without you. We have fun every Friday at Buddy's Burger Barn. But it's never quite as perfect as it could be, because you aren't there. OK?"

"Yeah," Allie whispered. Then, there was silence.

"What are you thinking?" Sami asked when she couldn't stand it any longer.

"I wish I could cut myself in half," said Allie so violently that Sami shuddered. "I want to come live with you, but I can't leave Daddy all alone."

"Your daddy and I talked about this. He wants—when he first took you to live in Hong Kong, we never planned for it to be forever. It was supposed to be until things settled down in Salem, but we always meant for you to come home and be with Johnny and Sydney and me. Now, we know you're happy where you are. And we don't want to ask you to give that up. You shouldn't leave your friends, and your school, and your father if you don't want to."

"But I want to! I mean, I don't want to, but more than that I want to come home. I want to know you. I want to know Sydney, and Johnny. He's my twin, and I only just started getting to know him when we came here."

"You didn't have to trick us into sending you to the same camp. You could have asked."

For a fraction of a second, Sami could have sworn that Allie looked puzzled. "We didn't know until we got here. It was a coincidence."

"Sure it was, Allie."

Allie closed her eyes as if in exasperation. She didn't open them again.

"Allie?" Sami prompted.

"So tired," said Allie. "Can't we just rest instead of finishing the scavenger hunt? There's no way we'd win now, anyway."

"Sure," Sami agreed, happy to have time alone with her daughter no matter what they were doing.

* * *

><p>It was turning into one of the best days of Lucas' life. He hadn't even allowed for the possibility that Johnny might agree to come live with him. The whole point of the exercise had been to demonstrate to the twins that they weren't prepared to accept the consequences of the family reunion they thought they wanted.<p>

He threw his joy into searching for the elusive brown mushroom. He was winning everything else; he might as well win the scavenger hunt, too.

Lucas and Johnny spotted the mushroom at the same time. Their hands closed over it together; their faces were inches apart.

Then Johnny screamed.

Lucas was so startled that he shouted, too; by the time he recovered, Johnny was rolling around in the dried leaves clutching his face.

"It hurts! It hurts!" Johnny howled.

His eye—_oh God, his eye_—was lying on the ground. The prosthetic had somehow fallen out.

Johnny kept wailing. "It hurts! Help me. Help me!"

"I don't know," Lucas whispered under his breath. He didn't know how to handle this at all. He had never even thought about the prosthetic falling out. What if part of the fake eye had gotten lose inside Johnny's head? What if it was working its way to his brain, ready to cause permanent damage if Johnny kept rolling around like that?

"It'll be OK," Lucas said with a confidence he didn't feel. He put the eye in his pocket and pulled Johnny into his arms. "Try to stay still."

Then he took off as fast as possible toward the camp.

Their prize-winning bag of scavenger hunt lay forgotten on the forest floor.

_Damn it, Sami! Why didn't you warn me?_

* * *

><p>Allie looked so tired that Sami didn't try to engage her in conversation. If anything, she was tempted to sing a lullaby to her little girl. She relished Allie's deep, even breaths until Allie's eyes flew open.<p>

"Hey, Allie," Sami beamed. "You ready to go back to camp? We have big plans to make. I'm so excited for you to come back to Salem."

"Maak hoi ngaan gong daai waa." _You're lying._

"Very funny, Allie. English, please."

"San fu saai. Wu ok bat syun." _Sorry. I'm not going to stop. _

"Impressive," said Sami wryly. "Let's go back to camp."

"Han zi jap gwat! Hei, bei gaau hei fun Sydney! Deon dou!" _You abandoned me. You like Sydney better! Stupid bugs!_ Allie burst into tears and slumped against the tree, shaking.

"Allie, honey…" Sami tried to hug her daughter, rub her back, and stroke her hair. Some language was universal. But Allie wrenched away from her.

"Soeng dak dou zou dak dou. Si gwo pek pik pek kui caam caam. Haai, caau? Faan wai!"_ He got what he wanted. He tried to cut me up. And you had a baby with him on purpose? You had sex with him after that? It's making me sick to my stomach!_

Sami couldn't understand a word Allie was saying, but she heard the emotion loud and clear—fear, disgust, anger, betrayal. It was everything she had suspected Allie must feel, and more. It was hard to remember that ten minutes before, Sami had been delighted at the thought that Allie wanted to come home and her family would be complete.

"Can you please try to tell me in English?" Sami prompted.

Allie let loose with an even longer, more accusatory string of words that might have been gibberish for all Sami knew.

Maybe they _were _gibberish. Maybe the stress of being asked to leave the only home she really knew had given her sensitive daughter some kind of mental break, and the things she was babbling were neither English nor Cantonese. Or maybe Allie had had a stroke and she didn't remember English, only Cantonese. What would Sami do then?

Sami dragged an unresisting Allie to her feet. "Come on. Let's go find Daddy."

_Damn it, Lucas! Why didn't you warn me?_

**_TBC_**


	9. An Explosion

**Part 8**

Sami and Allie had never had a chance to get far from the campground; despite the fact that Sami half-dragged Allie, their return trip took only a few minutes.

The campground was mostly deserted. Everyone else was still off looking for birch bark and brown mushrooms, Sami supposed. _If only my twins wanted something that easy to find—I shouldn't have complained about the worms or mentioned Sydney!_

A counselor spotted them slogging toward their tent and hastily rushed to their side. "Is Allie all right?" she asked Sami.

_I don't know! _Sami's mind screamed, but she wasn't about to say that aloud. She had spent most of Will's childhood listening to the rest of Salem shaking their heads at the sad situation of a sweet boy having a disgrace for a mother. She had no desire for a repeat performance.

"She's just overtired. She didn't sleep much last night," Sami hedged. It wasn't as if the counselor would be able to help if she knew the truth; Lucas was probably the only person in the entire group who spoke Cantonese. "I think we're just going to forfeit the scavenger hunt and lie down."

"All right. Feel better, Allie." Allie made a gesture something like a nod, which Sami thought was progress. "Let me know if you need anything, Ms. Brady."

"Thank you."

Sami had just managed to get Allie stretched out atop Lucas' sleeping bag—maybe his scent would comfort Allie as it had once comforted Sami—when she sensed rather than heard someone coming toward her. She drew up the tent flap just in time to see Lucas running toward her carrying—

"Oh God, Johnny!"

Typical twins. If one of them was going to have a crisis, of course the other wasn't going to be left out. When Sami and Eric had been Allie and Johnny's age, John had called it the _anything you can do, I can do better_ syndrome.

She sprang forward to meet them. "Lucas, what happened?" She imagined snake bites, tiger claws, poisonous mushrooms mistaken for safe ones, trees easily climbed but not so easily descended…

"I don't know, Sami." He was as frantic as she had ever seen him. Lucas had always told her that she could be the cautious parent; he would be the laid back one who didn't sweat the small stuff. Even when Will had shot EJ, Lucas had calmly responded with a plan that had worked well for many years. "He was fine—absolutely fine!—and then his eye—it just came out."

Sami brushed Johnny's wild curls away from his face.

Even years after the surgery that had removed Johnny's eye, she still felt a temporary thrill of horror each time she saw him without his prosthetic. _Not my child! Who hurt my child? I'll kill you!_

But, as always, the horror abated. Johnny was safe; the cancer was gone. He felt no pain, and his prosthetic had never been a problem except when he decided to remove it to "gross out" his classmates. She had grounded Johnny more for eye-related stunts than for everything else he had ever done combined.

"You're grounded, Johnny," she told him firmly as she stomped back toward the tent for the first aid kit. "Just put him down, Lucas," she called over her shoulder.

Lucas followed her into the tent, still cradling Johnny in his arms. "We have to get to a hospital," he said, but he didn't sound so frantic as he had a moment before. "What if something chipped off and is floating around in his brain?"

Sami burst out laughing, then felt guilty and struggled to control herself. She shouldn't laugh at Lucas for being a concerned father.

"There's nothing inside to chip off. Where's the eye?"

"My right pocket," Lucas said. He made no move to reach for it. Sami realized, with a rush of affection, that Lucas must still be too frightened to put Johnny down. Whatever else she had done wrong in her life, she had chosen the right father for her oldest three children.

Gently, Sami reached into Lucas' pocket to remove the prosthetic. Even in the midst of this miniature crisis, she relished the intimacy of the small gesture.

The false eye—as she had suspected—was completely intact.

"Lucas?"

"Yeah?"

She kissed him on the cheek. His skin still felt good beneath her lips. "Our son has punked you. And, I repeat, is grounded."

"Punked me? I don't think he's even conscious, Sami!"

"Put him down," Sami directed. She pointed at her own rumpled sleeping bag.

Lucas hesitated.

"Lucas, you know I am the queen of freaking out. Do you think there's even the slightest chance that I would be this calm if I wasn't sure everything was OK?"

"You do have a point," agreed Lucas, but he still looked so shaken that Sami didn't even pretend to take offense. When Lucas had laid Johnny out on the sleeping bag, Sami gently tugged up Johnny's shirt.

"Sami, it's his eye, not his—"

Sami tickled Johnny's exposed stomach. Within seconds, the tent was filled with the sounds of Johnny's raucous laughter.

"You see?" Sami said. "Not a bad acting job," she told Johnny. "But what are you?"

"Grounded," Johnny replied through his chuckles.

"He does this," Sami told Lucas. "Freaks out the kids in his class. Or his teachers. Or his baby-sitter. He loves an audience, you know that. He's not supposed to pop it in and out too much—it gets dirty, and there's always the chance it will break. I have the cleaning solution right here, though."

She upended the first aid kit. The blue bottle of cleaning solution tumbled out, as did something Sami hadn't seen since she'd been Johnny's age.

"Is this a walkie-talkie? They still make those?" She passed it to Lucas, who turned it over in his hand.

"It's on," Lucas pointed out. Now that his heart had stopped pounding, he was able to glare properly at Johnny, who had crawled across the tent and curled up beside Allie. Lucas had barely noticed his daughter until that moment.

He squatted in front of the twins. "How do you suppose a walkie-talkie got turned on and left at the bottom of a first aid kit?" he asked.

There was no answer.

Lucas focused on Allie. Allie was sneaky, no doubt about it, but she hadn't made a fool of him within the past ten minutes. "What's going on, Allie?" he asked.

"Sap waak dou mei jau jat pit." _Nothing's going on. _

"Oh," Sami broke in. "Allie is refusing to speak English." She bit her lower lip; Lucas felt a wave of nostalgia at the realization that she still did that. He now associated the gesture almost completely with Allie. "She was really upset before, she was crying. Maybe she can't remember how to speak English?"

Lucas shook his head. "I asked her what was going on, and she said _sap waak dou mei jau jat pit_. That's an idiom. It basically meaning 'nothing's happening.' She understood the question." He tossed the walkie-talkie from one hand to the other. "But since Allie seems to prefer Cantonese, I'll teach you some, Sami." He kissed his ex-wife on the cheek, mirroring the action she'd taken when she'd realized Johnny had put one over on him. "Repeat after me: J_ohnny zeoi jau jau gwai_."

"Johnny zeoi jau jau gwai," Sami mimicked.

"And why doesn't Allie tell us what that means?" Lucas suggested.

Allie was silent. Johnny poked her. "They said my name," he half-whined. "What does it mean?"

Allie sighed. "It means 'Johnny isn't the only one who's grounded.'"

"Excellent," said Lucas with no small amount of sarcasm. He exited the tent still playing with the walkie-talkie; moments later he returned, carrying its mate. "This was in Allie's pillow," he told Sami.

"What a shock," said Sami drily as she helped Johnny reinsert his false eye. "Tell me, Lucas, did Johnny agree to come live with you before the incident with his eye?"

"He did," Lucas confirmed.

"And Allie agreed to live with me. Because neither one of them were surprised, because they heard our conversation last night and decided to call our bluff. And then they thought they'd demonstrate just how difficult they could be—"

"So we'd realize that we'd have to get remarried because that was the only way we could handle the terrible twins," Lucas picked up smoothly. He looked both twins hard in the face. "But that is not ever going to happen. I'm sorry. The world is full of children whose parents aren't together, and they all survive. Your mother's parents were divorced when she wasn't much older than you. My parents never even got married."

"You have two parents who love you and will always take care of you. That's the best case scenario. When parents who shouldn't be married stay together for the sake of the children… it never works out. The fighting and the unhappiness aren't good for anyone."

"So were you unhappy when you were married?" asked Allie slyly.

"I can honestly tell you that we were all unhappy," Sami told her.

"Were you unhappy because of something Dad did, or because you both knew you'd have to get divorced so EJ would stop hurt everyone? Because it doesn't count as unhappy if—unless you really divorced Dad because you wanted to be with someone who tried to cut Johnny and me into little pieces before we were born."

Lucas mumbled an oath under his breath; Sami appreciated the sentiment. She hadn't planned on telling the twins that part of their history. Not ever.

She also hadn't planned on Allie being quite so attuned to subtleties. She was used to Johnny and his short attention span, and Sydney with her lack of interest in most emotional topics.

"All right," Sami tried again. "At the time, I didn't want to divorce your father. But we have very different lives now. That's what we were trying to show you when we asked you to change homes. Neither one of you wants to start a new school or make new friends. One of you would have to do that if we were all going to live together."

"I would do it if I had to," said Allie.

"So would I," agreed Johnny. "I could live in Hong Kong. I could learn martial arts."

"Don't make it like you're staying apart for us," Allie finished. "We're twins, and we haven't lived in the same place since we were four years old. That's not normal. That's a decision you made because you wanted to see each other as little as possible—so you split us up instead of sharing. Because you were afraid that if you were in the same room you'd get back together, and you're both too stubborn to admit it."

"That's not how it happened."

"Except it is."

"Don't speak to your mother that way," Lucas injected.

"I'm not allowed to speak Cantonese. I'm not allowed to say things that are true. What _am_ I allowed to say?"

"You can say whatever you like, as long as you say it respectfully. That means no speaking Cantonese to someone who can't understand it, and no backtalk when we're trying to have a serious, adult conversation with you."

"How is it backtalk to—fine. If Mom loves me so much, why is this trip the first time she's been in the same room with me for years? A trip she didn't plan? Either she doesn't love me, she's fine with the replacement daughter she has, or she was avoiding you. Which is it?"

"Your mother loves you just as much as she loves Sydney and your brothers. And she wasn't avoiding me. We—"

"Skype doesn't count."

"No interrupting—"

"Then stop lying—"

"Allie—"

"And you, back me up!"

"I agree with everything Allie said."

"Johnny, you remember when Rafe left and EJ died and—"

"Excuse me?"

A young counselor lifted the flap of the tent. Lucas, Sami, Johnny, and Allie all turned toward her angrily.

"We'll try to keep it down. Please leave us alone," said Lucas tersely.

"I'm sorry," said the counselor. "But—"

"You heard him. Please leave," said Sami.

"Ms. Brady, Mr. Horton, we've received a message that there's a problem with your son—Will?" 

_**TBC**_


	10. Will's Interlude

**Part 9**

A lifetime of fishing trips with Grandpa Roman and Great-Grandpa Shawn hadn't prepared Will for months at sea with the Merchant Marine. He'd been surprised and embarrassed to get sea sick two days into his first voyage. He hadn't let the nausea interrupt his work, though, and he had almost immediately established himself as skilled, dedicated, trustworthy, and industrious. These were all things he didn't care to be considered any longer. But they were the path of least resistance.

The others seemed to know instinctively to back away from Will. Whenever anyone approached him- whether to challenge or befriend- Will grabbed onto the thought that he'd nearly murdered a man at the age of 16. He remembered the gun in his hands, the sound of the shot, the smell of blood, and the body on the floor. The memory must have shown plainly on his face, because whoever it was always walked away and didn't come back.

Will did his duty and demonstrated that he wasn't a pushover, and that was enough to be left the hell alone. He was hardly unique in his desire to avoid much interaction. Many of the Mariners were running from something.

Jeff was the closest thing Will had to a friend. (Obviously, someone who would shoot to kill as a teenager and let his father take the fall for the crime wasn't capable of real friendship.) Jeff was a bit harder to avoid than most because Will had to step on Jeff's bunk, right near Jeff's head, to climb into his own bed. Even a hardened criminal didn't do things like that without a by-your-leave to the other guy.

Will knew for a fact that Jeff was, to the day, two years older than he was. Most of the time, the two years felt like twenty. Jeff was established and knowledgeable and always seemed to have been there and seen that. That might have been why, once in a while, Will actually answered when Jeff asked him a personal question.

Not that he answered completely.

Jeff had been telling a story about how his mother's next-to-last boyfriend had bought him a hooker for his fourteenth birthday. "I _loved_ that woman!" Jeff exclaimed, to raucous amusement from the others. "Would have followed her around like a puppy dog, except I couldn't drive so I couldn't get over to her place." More laughter followed. Will didn't join in. Prostitution, frankly, made him think of his Grandma Kate, and how she had delayed his parents' marriage for years, and how maybe if she had never done that...

"What about you, Will? First girl you loved?"

What passed for a polite silence waited for Will's answer.

So Will mentioned that the girl's name had been Mia, and she'd been very beautiful, and always interested in people other than herself, and weirdly straightforward. He said she'd left him to go to an exclusive dance academy.

Nothing about Grace, even though so many years after the fact Grace and Mia were practically inseparable in his mind. Nothing about Sydney. Nothing about how once Will and his parents had been closer than close, united against the world, but then Sami had decided to lie about Grace and Sydney and Rafe and keep Will out of the loop. Sami had discarded her first child for a new special trinity.

Or so Will had thought.

Really, their family had shattered when Lucas had taken the fall for Will. If Will had been man enough to handle the consequences of his own actions- if Will hadn't done whatever he'd done to make Lucas think he was too fragile to know the truth- if Will had been in prison where he belonged- Sami and Lucas would never have given up on each other.

Will was an adult, and it still bothered him that his parents weren't together. Maybe Lucas had been right. Maybe Will really _was_ stunted, weak, helpless, hopeless, easily misled, stupid, a burden to be cosseted and lied to...

Maybe Will was doomed to destroy everything he touched.

Ever since he had overcome his brainwashing (what kind of person allowed himself to be brainwashed?), Will had done his best to stay away from everyone. There would be no more interfering and no more dragging other people down with him.

Of course, he slipped on occasion. Just before shipping out this last time, he had emailed each of the twins with a suggestion of an appropriate summer camp. Then he had emailed Sydney and told her to do whatever she could to keep the twins and their parents from realizing that they were off to the same camp. He couldn't help but wonder how that had worked out.

"Sounds like this Mia girl was too good for you," offered one of the Mariners.

"She was," Will agreed. Who wasn't too good for him? (It was beyond irrelevant that if Will was going to go around worrying about romance, he was more attracted to Jeff than he was to any woman. Male, female; that wasn't the point. The point was that Will had made a mess of his life. So he didn't share. It wasn't as if the story about Mia was technically untrue.)

"My dream girl would have a flat head, so I could put my beer on it, and no teeth," said another.

They went back to laughing.

Will went back to forgetting about everyone he had ever known. Except EJ. He would always remember how he had tried to kill a man, and how, in so doing, he had killed himself.

* * *

><p>Soon there was no time for stupid conversations about lost loves.<p>

First there was the storm and all the extra work that came with it.

Then there was the rescue mission; a reefer ship had been disabled by the rough seas. For two days, no one rested. None of them minded. It was a matter of life and death, every human being united against the sea.

And then there was the chain of explosions. At first it had looked like the reefer alone would be destroyed, but the two ships were closer together than they should have been, especially in the midst of a storm that tossed them back and forth.

Will and Jeff and Matthew were together on the bridge when the first blast shook the ship. Will happened to have his arm wrapped snugly around a support; he tightened his grip and hung on. In a fraction of a second, he realized that that was not enough. Jeff and Matthew couldn't reach the support. The ship swung drunkenly downwards. Jeff and Matthew were airborne.

Will grabbed Jeff by the back of his neck and hurled him back onto the the ship.

Matthew fell sixty feet and slammed face first into the concrete-hard water. In the pouring rain mixed with smoke, Jeff and Will immediately lost sight of him.

Jeff let lose a string of obscenities that was impressive even for a sailor. Somewhere in there, Will heard "you saved my life" but there was no time to deal with that now. They had to see if Matthew still had a life to save. They had to keep the ship in one piece.

That turned out to be a losing battle.

Communication was almost impossible over the combined roar of wind, rain, waves, and fire; they sensed, rather than heard, the order to abandon ship.

Will and three others were disentangling a lifeboat when the sinking reefer rolled toward them a final time. There was a loud crack and a sharp pain in Will's leg.

He didn't know that he was in the water until he choked on a mouthful of salt. He didn't feel cold or wet. He only felt the hot, vibrating stillness of his leg.

He started to swim away from the wreck of a ship. The lifeboats couldn't be too far away, and everyone would be looking for those who had been knocked overboard.

After one stroke, he knew that his leg was of less than no use. He tried to pull himself forward with just his arms; a swell tossed him backwards twice as far.

That was it, then.

He didn't really mind. It wasn't much of a loss, after all, the kid who shot people and didn't remember it, the kid who couldn't be trusted with the truth, the kid who no longer had a place in the world.

He flipped onto his back and let the rain pound his face. Hypothermia wouldn't be so bad. It would be better than the night he'd realized for sure that he'd been the one to shoot EJ, and that his parents had blithely lied to him about it.

"Will!" It sounded like Lucas' voice.

"Dad?" he mumbled against the rain. "Dad, I'm so sorry." The shame was overwhelming, and he closed his eyes.

"Don't close your damn eyes, Will! Don't you dare!" The voice was in his ear now, along with unpleasantly hot breath. It wasn't Lucas.

"It's me, Will."

That didn't help. Will knew he'd met a lot of people, but he couldn't remember any of them.

A hand slapped at Will's face. He couldn't remember what he'd done to deserve it. Probably something stupid.

"You do not get to do this after you saved me, OK? Understand?"

Will didn't, but he opened his eyes to see what the commotion was about.

"Good. You and me, we just have to make it around the side. There's another freighter already here. They stayed far enough back. They'll pull us up."

And somehow Will was dragged along the side of the convulsing ship toward the open sea. He couldn't make out the outline of the third ship until they were beside it and someone was tugging a harness around him.

"No wonder he's in shock. His leg's a mess."

All of Will was a mess. That was nothing new. The sailor's revelation struck him as so ludicrous that he began to laugh. He laughed until the harness touched his ruined leg. Then he passed out.

When he opened his eyes, his parents were sitting on either side of his hospital bed. Their joined hands lay atop his chest.

**TBC**


	11. Plan B

**Part 10**

Johnny threw the remote control at the couch in frustration. He didn't care when it missed the couch and broke into two pieces on the hard stone floor. What did it matter if it broke? He couldn't use it, anyway. Probably there was nothing he wanted to watch on TV, anyway.

He wouldn't have thought that things like television would be so different in Hong Kong.

Allie trotted out of her bedroom, saw the remote on the floor, and nonchalantly re-assembled it. She pointed it at the television to see if it worked. The television snapped to life.

Johnny scowled. It wasn't fair that Allie knew how to do everything, because she was home, and he didn't know how to do anything, because he had been dropped off in this strange place.

Allie offered the remote to Johnny, but he flopped onto the couch and shook his head. He didn't want it anymore.

Allie climbed over the back of the couch and sat next to Johnny. A list of movies appeared on the screen. Allie scrolled past some of Johnny's favorites, and some he had never heard of, before coming to rest on _The Parent Trap._

In spite of himself, Johnny laughed. "Checking to see what we did wrong?"

Allie shrugged. She hadn't been very talkative since they'd gotten the news that Will had been hurt. It had been a very quiet, very long trip from Camp Canobie to Hong Kong. Lucas and Sami had said the same few things over and over again.

_I wish he weren't so far away! What if we don't get there in time?_

_What are you talking about "in time?" He'll be fine. He has to be._

_At least it's somewhere one of us knows. They could have brought him somewhere we didn't even speak the language._

Then Lucas had tapped out some messages on his phone to find someone to stay with Johnny and Allie.

Johnny had protested that they didn't need a baby-sitter, especially not in Allie's own home. He had looked to Allie for support, but she had been vacantly staring out the window with tear-filled eyes.

"Have you forgotten that you're grounded?" Sami asked Johnny. "The two of you thought it was funny to pretend to be hurt. Maybe now that your brother really is hurt, you'll realize it wasn't funny. But you're certainly not staying at your father's house unsupervised."

And so a woman called Lien parked herself in front of the door like a jailer. She spoke English, but she didn't respond to any of Johnny's suggestions that they play a game or talk about something. She preferred to glare.

Around the time that Lucas called to tell them that Will's leg was broken in 14 places, but that he would recover and they could see him soon, another woman came to take Lien's place. She was just as uncommunicative as Lien.

Being left alone for days on end with people who didn't talk was wearing on Johnny.

Just when he was considering screaming and banging his head against something, Allie turned down the volume of the movie. "Do you think we should have just gone forward with the switch? Moved in with the wrong parents? Instead of trying to make a point right away?"

"Doesn't matter," said Johnny. "We can't change it now."

"I guess not." Allie turned the volume back up. The housekeeper in the movie had just caught one of the twins impersonating her sister.

"That's what we need," declared Johnny. "They had people helping them. Grown ups."

"Who would help us? The only other person in Hong Kong who might think Mom and Dad should be together is Will, and it's not like he could do anything even if he wanted to."

"Well," said Johnny hesitantly. "He could help without doing anything."

Allie's eyes widened and she grabbed a pillow and hugged it. "We can't."

"Why not? We didn't make Will break his leg. It just happened. There's nothing wrong with using what happened anyway to our advantage." He cringed as the words left his mouth. "I really sound like Mom."

"Well, if Mom would do it…" Allie pondered.

"And she totally would," Johnny assured.

"Dad takes advantage of stuff in business all the time. Just because something bad happened to another company, that doesn't mean you don't try to take their market share."

"Whatever," agreed Johnny excitedly. "Look, Will's here. Mom's not going to want to leave him. Dad's not going to want Will to go to Salem to recover, is he? Even when he can move?"

"No way."

"And we're already here. So we just have to make them see that the only thing that makes sense is for all of us to stay. And if Mom moves here, even if she thinks it's only while Will is getting better, that gives us more time to work on them."

"You're a genius!" Allie raised her hand, and Johnny slapped her five.

"It runs in the family," said Johnny modestly.

They had the same thought at the same time. "Sydney!" they said in unison.

"We need to get her here," Allie decided. "So Mom can't use her as an excuse to leave, even for a while. Do you think we can just enroll the two of you in school without Mom or Dad? It starts soon. Maybe they'll be so busy with Will they won't even notice that you've both moved here sort of permanently."

"We don't know Cantonese," said Johnny. Not _we've never lived anywhere but Salem._ Not _we don't want to leave our friends_. Why had he chosen an objection he knew Allie would be able to counter?

"My school teaches in both languages. It depends on the class. They can maybe keep you in mostly English classes while you're learning. And I can start teaching you now. It isn't hard. I didn't know it when I came here. You won't be learning alone, either, you'll have Sydney." She hopped to her feet. "What time is it in Salem?"

"Early. But not too early to call," Johnny determined.

They tumbled over each other trying to get into Allie's bedroom as quickly as possible. "She's with Uncle Bo and Aunt Hope?" Allie asked.

"Yeah."

"I think their number is in here."

Johnny eyed Allie's pink laptop distastefully. Her whole room looked like Pepto Bismol gone wrong—it was much too pink and girly. Allie wasn't unbearably girly, though—she hiked and played sports and liked being outdoors. He said so.

Allie laughed. "Dad tried to overcompensate when he'd decorated it because he wasn't sure about having a girl," she said. "My favorite thing about this room is that he tried so hard. And I'm used to it. Girly isn't bad. Found it." Her computer called Bo and Hope's house.

"You aren't going to make us plan out everything we say?"

Allie shook her head. "You're right. The more we wing it, the better we do."

The first surprise began when their call was answered not by Bo or Hope or Ciara or Sydney but by Julie Williams.

"Cousin Julie!" squealed Allie with what was probably real delight. Doug and Julie were the only members of the extended family that Allie knew well; after all, they were the only ones who made regular stops in Hong Kong on their way to assorted exotic destinations.

"Allie and Johnny!" Julie looked equally pleased to see them. "I haven't seen the two of you together since you were babies."

Johnny and Allie nodded, happy that Julie seemed to realize that that state of affairs sucked.

"How's Will?" Julie continued.

"As far as we know, he hasn't woken up yet. Dad just said that he broke his leg fourteen times but he's going to get better. But they gave him a lot of drugs so he's asleep."

"Your poor brother," Julie sighed. "He had such a rough childhood with one thing and another. No wonder he decided to run off and join the Merchant Marine. And now this. And your parents must be frantic."

Johnny looked down to hide his elation. Julie had given them a perfect opening, and he knew Allie wouldn't let it pass.

"They really are," sad Allie sadly. "Especially Mom. Seeing Will like that makes it even harder for her to be away from Sydney. She worries about Johnny and me, too, but at least we're close."

"We're all taking good care of your little sister for you. Don't you worry."

"Oh, we know that. Mom knows it too. I just think it would be so much better if we could all be together, so Mom's attention wouldn't have to be do divided. But it's not like there's anything we can do about it. We're here, and she's there."

"Well, I wouldn't say there's nothing we can do about it," said Julie.

"You'd really let Sydney come here?" asked Johnny hopefully.

"Well, I'm not putting her on a plane by herself. But Doug and I haven't been out that way for a long time. And it seems like your parents could use a little extra help."

"I don't think they'd ever ask you. But I think they'd really appreciate it if you did," said Allie.

"Maybe you could make it a surprise?" added Johnny.

Julie cocked her head, and for a second Johnny thought that he might have gone too far. But then Julie told Johnny that that sounded like a wonderful idea, and that she and Sydney would leave right away if Sydney didn't have any objections.

Johnny and Allie fell on the bed laughing as soon as they'd turned off the computer. 

* * *

><p>"Sami." Lucas squeezed his ex-wife's hand. "We have company."<p>

Sami, overtired and disoriented, glanced at the door to see if a doctor or nurse had entered. Then she saw her son's eyes flutter open.

"_Will_," she said. There was so much pain, love, and fear in the name that Lucas squeezed her hand even more tightly. _Don't freak out, Sami_, he wanted to say.

She had every right to freak out, especially after what she'd gone through with Grace eight years before. He had every right to freak out just because Will was his son and he adored him.

But if anyone was going to freak out, it had to be Will, and they had to be ready.

A horrible part of Lucas saw a silver lining in the severity of Will's injury. He hated that Will was in pain; he wished he could have taken the pain in Will's place. But if Will couldn't move, Will couldn't run away. They could repair their relationship. They could help Will see that the lie about EJ wasn't so terrible, really, and that neither Lucas nor Sami had ever meant to hurt their son.

"Hi, Buddy, " Lucas said hoarsely. "Glad you decided to join us."

Will's gaze meandered toward Lucas. Lucas saw confusion, but also recognition that sent a jolt of relief through his body.

"You're back," Will mumbled.

"Your mother and I came as fast as we could when we heard what happened to you."

"No." Will flopped his arm in what Lucas assumed he had intended to be a dismissive gesture. "You were in the water and now you're here."

"In the water? You mean when you went overboard?"

Will didn't answer.

"Will, honey? Do you remember what happened?" Sami tried.

"Rain. Refrigerated ship. Explosion," he muttered. "I was supposed to die. Am I dead?"

"You were most definitely not supposed to die. Not for a long, long time. We all love you too much to let you go."

"And no," Lucas added. "You're not dead."

"Whatever," said Will, and he closed his eyes.

**TBC**


	12. The Past

**Part 11**

For several days, Will was asleep more than he was awake. His waking periods lasted only a few minutes.

But Sami was determined that Will would never wake and fail to find her in the room.

One of the doctors suggested that Will was a grown man who did not require his mother's presence 24-7, even while he was hospitalized.

He didn't make the mistake of suggesting it a second time. In fact, after that, the doctor seemed quite careful to put Lucas between himself and Sami.

Sami alternated between holding her son's hand and watching him through a glass door while she and Lucas talked in circles about what they would do next.

On the third day, Sami left the area—quite unwillingly—to call Salem and assure herself that all was well with Sydney. Allie and Johnny answered their parents' calls like clockwork, but Sami had consistently been unable to reach her youngest child.

Will chose that moment to open his eyes.

"Hi Dad," he volunteered, and Lucas' heart soared. Will had been getting less and less confused, and now he sounded downright focused.

"How are you feeling?"

"Weird. Where's Mom?"

"She's talking to your sister. She's going to be so angry that she missed you." Lucas smiled a little, suddenly transported back to the days when he and Will had liked nothing better than teasing Sami.

"I'll be back."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Yeah."

"Aren't you glad you'll be back?" Lucas held his breath. From the short conversations they had had with Will so far, he and Sami had not been able to determine whether Will was disoriented and angry with his parents, or whether he was depressed and suicidal. Just last week, Lucas would not have been able to believe that he would long for the days when he was sure that Will hated him.

"I guess. Yeah."

"Good."

"Do you think you can think while you're unconscious?" Will asked suddenly. It was the longest, most sophisticated thing he had said yet.

"I don't know what doctors say about it, but I think you can. That's what dreaming is, right? And when you were a little kid—when I was in a coma for a year—I always felt like I thought that whole time. I told people that I had time to think while I was in the coma, and they'd look at me like I was nuts. But…" Lucas didn't bother finishing. Will was asleep again. "Come back soon," he whispered.

Sami chose that moment to whip the door open. "I missed him?" she asked angrily.

Lucas smiled. He wished Will could have seen this. "Yes. But he said to tell you he'd be back."

Sami's eyes filled with tears. "He did?"

Lucas had never been able to stand it when Sami cried, not even when she was crying happy tears. He stood up and gathered Sami into his arms. "I asked if he was glad he'd be back, and he said yes," Lucas whispered.

Sami shifted in Lucas' arms and looked him hard in the face. "God damn you, Lucas," she murmured. Then she kissed him.

Lucas returned the kiss. After all, it had been a long time since anyone had kissed him like that, and he had had a rough week. A makeout session and the confirmation that Sami still thought he had it going on—because she had better want him, whether he wanted her or not— was the least he deserved. In fact, he was so stressed out that he deserved a lot more than this. A hospital had lots of beds, or, if the beds were busy, lots of supply closets. It would be better for everyone if he and Sami brought their tension down a few notches. He remembered exactly how to touch her, and he knew she remembered exactly how to touch him.

He moved his lips from her mouth to her neck and slid one hand under her blouse.

"Go to hell, Lucas," Sami murmured.

"What was that for?" he asked without moving his hand.

"The kiss or the suggestion that you spend eternity burning?"

"The second one. The kiss, I know that's because I'm hot and you've never been able to resist me."

Sami pushed Lucas away, as he'd known she would. The one part of his brain that was still working had deliberately said something to set her off, since he didn't have the strength to stop this train wreck himself.

"I don't have to resist you because there's nothing to resist. You aren't ugly or anything, but our past is our past. That's the one thing we agree on."

"I'm not ugly or anything." Lucas pretended to check out his reflection in the glass door. "Thank you, Sami. That's the best compliment I've ever gotten. I think I'll go home and write it in my diary."

"You do that." Sami reached around Lucas to push the door open; he tried not to react as her body brushed against his. "Come on. Will is obviously traumatized enough. He doesn't need his parents to have a makeout session in his hospital room, even if he is asleep." She scowled.

Lucas followed her outside. "What are you so angry about? This is good news. He's more with it and he's less upset. Isn't that what we wanted?"

"Of course that's what we wanted!" Sami snapped. "But he's only going to give it to you, right?"

"You're mad because you weren't here when he woke up? Sami, you can't be with him every minute. It's impossible. He knows that—that's why he said—"

"No, genius, that's not why I'm mad. I'm mad because he's opening up to _you_, happy to see _you_, ready to forgive _you_. You always got to be the cool parent, the fun parent, the laid back parent. And every time we fought, he sided with _you_. Your psycho mother drugged me and dumped me in bed with Brandon Walker, and Will sided with _you_. EJ DiMera said he'd kill our families if I didn't marry him, and Will sided with _you_. But this time—this time you were the one he was really—_you_ were the one who lied to him and told him it was an alcoholic hallucination. _You_ were the one who told the world you did it and went to prison. I had nothing to do with it. But he's still going to side with _you_ and stay angry with me, because I married EJ to save both of your lives, so that makes everything that happened afterwards my fault."

"There aren't any sides this time," said Lucas quietly.

"There are always sides. We spent too many years fighting over Will for—even when we were together—it was always your little club that you had with Will that crazy screwup Sami wasn't part of."

"I'm sorry you felt that way. And you're right, we were wrong about some of those things. We were especially wrong about that thing with Brandon. We apologized. I did everything I could to make that up to you Sami, and you took me back."

"Of course I took you back. You were all I wanted. You and Will."

"From where I was, it never looked that way. There was always someone I had to fight for you. Brandon wanted you. Austin wanted you. EJ wanted you. It was always a battle, and trying to prove myself worthy every second of every day because one of your admirers was always there to sweep in and be a better alternative as soon as I made a mistake."

"I never left you. I never threatened to leave you for any of those men. I always chose you. I chose you every time. I never really wanted Brandon, not after he left me bleeding to death while the DiMeras stood there and laughed. I never wanted Austin when he came back. I wanted you and he wanted Carrie and we agreed to be each other's second choice. And I certainly never chose EJ."

"So we're back to that again." Lucas' lips tightened. "How do you explain Sydney, then?"

"Leave my daughter out of this."

"Please. You know I wasn't talking about Sydney Brady, human being. I was talking about what you did, and with whom, to create her."

"What I did was miss you. What I did was get so angry that you weren't there and didn't want me and didn't trust me that I did the one thing I knew would hurt you like you hurt me. You were always accusing me of secretly wanting the man who raped me and tried to kill my kids, anyway, so I got pissed off and made a mistake and made it true. For a second. But that one error in judgment gave me Sydney, and she's terrific, so I don't get to regret it."

Lucas sighed. "Yeah, she's a great kid."

"She's amazing. So calm, so poised, so collected. Even though she's tiny, people think she's older than Johnny because she's so mature. And she's brilliant. Her teachers have to do one thing after another to make sure she's challenged at school. You know what? You missed out when you didn't want to be her father."

"I would have been proud to be Sydney's father. What I wasn't going to do was get into yet another war with the DiMeras when they found out you lied about her. What I wasn't going to do was throw Allie into being an afterthought, or put Will in a position where the DiMeras were after him by association, not when he had his own secret that he didn't even know about. What I wasn't going to do was keep fighting EJ for you."

"It wouldn't have been a fight. I didn't want him."

"You tried to marry him again."

"Yeah? How did that work out? Oh, right, I shot him in the head like he deserved."

"But you still got to the point where you decided to marry him, without blackmail."

"He faked Sydney's death and then gave her back to me. How scared are you right now, for Will? Do you think you'd be in your right state of mind if you spent months thinking he was dead? Do you think you'd be grateful beyond all reason and logic to whoever brought him back to you?"

"I'm grateful to that Jeff kid who dragged Will out of the water, but I'm not planning to marry him. Are you?"

"Yes, because I'm the one who marries people I barely know. Nicole, Chloe… Carrie, well, you had no excuse with that one, you knew what she was like and you married her anyway… and you had that background check on Nicole and figured she wouldn't do it to you, and she did… and Chloe had just gotten through screwing up Brady's life when you got into bed with her. You were just lucky you never got any of them pregnant, so I can't point at you like you point at Sydney and me." She mimicked Lucas. "'How do you explain Nicolette? Or Clorinda? Or Carla?'"

"I wouldn't have named the kid Clorinda."

"You wanted to name Allie Lucasana."

"You wanted to name her after a trampy nun. Lucasana would have been better than that."

"Colleen is a perfectly good name."

"I wish every day that that woman had never existed."

Sami sighed, suddenly drained of all energy. "You know what? So do I."

_**TBC.**_


	13. Will's Dream

**Part 12**

"You're feeling better, then, Will?"

Will opened his eyes more easily than he had since before the storm had hit. His head wasn't fuzzy any more, so he sat up.

Uncle Mickey stood beside his bed, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase.

"Aren't you dead?" asked Will bluntly.

"If I were dead, would I be standing here?"

Will couldn't argue with that logic.

"Come on, Will, get up. Your trial is starting in five minutes."

Will jumped out of bed. Luckily, he was already wearing a suit; even more luckily, his leg seemed to have healed. He and Mickey ran down the corridor until the hospital turned into a courthouse.

The courtroom was full of witnesses, but Will couldn't make out their faces as Mickey hustled him to the defendant's table.

They didn't even have time to catch their breath before the bailiff cried "All rise for the Honorable Judge Horton!"

_Judge Horton?_ Will wondered. Had he gotten very lucky? Or was this some kind of conflict of interest? Would they have to adjourn and get a new judge? If so, maybe he would have time enough to remember exactly why he was on trial.

A bright orange tiger prowled into the courtroom and seated himself behind the judge's bench.

"Oh," Will breathed nervously. "That Horton."

"Didn't I tell you?" asked Mickey distractedly.

"No!" Will replied firmly. "I would have remembered that."

"It's good news, really. He's one of the only judges the DiMeras can't buy."

"But he's a tiger," said Will.

"Is that unusual?" asked Mickey. He reached into his briefcase and withdrew a yellow book labeled _Practicing Law for Dummies_. "I don't think it says anything about that in here."

Will clenched his jaw. His head began to ache.

"Don't worry, Will. I haven't won a case in fifty years, so I'm definitely due."

"Silence!" snapped Judge Horton the Tiger. "You are charged with the attempted murder of Elvis DiMera and with interfering with an investigation. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty, Your Honor," said Mickey. "Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity."

"Proceed with your opening statement."

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury," Mickey began.

For the first time, Will saw twelve jurors staring at him with hate in their eyes. It took him a moment to recognize them, or at least some of them. He had been a very small boy when he had last seen Kristen Blake, but he remembered her nonetheless. He recognized her strange lookalike, Susan Banks, more from Salem lore than from actual memory. The nun who sat next to Susan was an exact duplicate. In fact, all of the jurors, male and female, were virtually identical. One was distinguished by a cowboy hat; another by scar; a third by a red wig; and a fourth by a ridiculous moustache.

But all twelve were far more alike than they were unalike.

"Can I forfeit my right to a jury trial, and just agree to accept Judge Horton the Tiger's decision?" Will asked.

"No," snarled all twelve jurors in unison. Again, they sounded more alike than unalike. One had a Southern accent, and another an English accent, and another a New York accent… but really, they spoke as one.

"My client, Will Horton, is deserving of your compassion," Mickey continued as if nothing had happened. "He was born to teenagers who were not ready to be parents. His home life was in a constant state of flux as he shuffled from one family member to another, from crisis to crisis. When Will finally achieved some stability, Elvis DiMera arrived with the intention of taking that away. He threatened Will's life. He made attempts on the life of Will's father and siblings. He violated Will's mother and then forced her into a marriage against her will. Will was a teenager. His brain wasn't fully developed. He was unable to process the constant stream of threats and trauma, so he decided to take matters into his own hands, as he had had to do all his life. And when he'd done it, when he'd shot DiMera, his young, unfinished brain was overwhelmed. He blacked it out. By the time he remembered what had happened, his father had already confessed, served his time, and been released. Will had nothing to do with any kind of cover up."

Mickey sat down.

Across the aisle, the prosecutor jumped to her feet. To his horror, Will recognized Sydney. She was dressed in a tiny, perfectly tailored blue suit; her curly hair was swept away from her still-babyish face.

She was eight years old, and she looked far more competent than Mickey.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, aren't I cute?"

"You're very very very cute!" the jury chorused. "You're the cutest cute thing I ever saw, cuter than a speckled pup in a red wagon!"

"The defendant—" Sydney pointed at Will, "Would rather I didn't exist. My own brother tried to kill my father. If he has succeeded, I would never have been born. More than once, he's wished that I hadn't been born."

"I never said that!" injected Will.

"Just because you never said it, doesn't mean you never thought it. You wanted Mom with your dad, and you don't think she should ever have been with my dad. You think I should never have been born."

"I think you should have been born. I wish you were exactly the same, but with a different father."

"That's ridiculous," said Sydney coldly. "If Elvis DiMera wasn't my father, I wouldn't have been born. You hate an eight year old little girl. Your own sister. You're mean."

"You're mean, mean, mean!" the jurors scolded Will.

"Call your first witness," Judge Horton the Tiger instructed Sydney when the cackling of the jurors had died down.

"The prosecution calls Susan Banks Crumb," said Sydney.

Susan jumped from the jury box to the witness stand.

"Objection!" shouted Mickey. "She can't testify and be a juror at the same trial!"

"Overruled," said Judge Horton the Tiger. "If Nancy Wesley could be the forewoman on the jury that sent Sami to death row while spending her every waking moment trying to destroy Mike and Carrie so her husband could take over the hospital, the victim's mother can certainly testify and be on the jury."

"Fair point," admitted Mickey.

"So, Grandma," Sydney began, "Did you love your son?"

"I love my Elvis very very very much. It breaks my heart every day knowing he's gone. I fought for him. My sister Penelope died to protect him, and now her death was in vain. Will Horton is mean mean mean. He's a mean mean mean vampire, that's what he is."

"Isn't he also a horrible person for wishing that I don't exist?"

"Objection! Leading!" said Mickey.

"Overruled," said Judge Horton the Tiger. "A judge could let Andre DiMera out of prison five minutes after the whole Melaswen thing, and you expect me to get hung up on the rules of evidence?"

"Will is mean, mean, mean for trying to take my sweet granddaughter Sydney-widney away from me," Susan moaned. Susan broke into incoherent sobs that lasted for at least ten minutes. Judge Horton the Tiger handed her a handkerchief.

"No further questions," said Sydney.

"Hello, Susan," said Mickey. "So you believe that when Will shot Elvis, he tried to kill Sydney as well?"

"Yes. Sydney would never have been born if her daddy had died back then."

"Isn't it also true that Sydney would never have been born if Will hadn't shot Elvis? If Lucas hadn't been in prison, Sami would never have gone to Elvis voluntarily. She did it because she was angry at Lucas."

"That's true," Susan admitted. "But Will is still a mean mean mean vampire. I'm very, very, very sure of that."

"You see, Your Honor, any number of tiny changes would have eliminated the existence of Sydney. It took a very specific set of events—one that included Will shooting Elvis—to bring her into the world. The tiniest change might have resulted in an equally special child that we will never meet, but we can't hold Will or anyone else responsible for that."

"Can't we?" asked Judge Horton the Tiger.

"Allow me to call a witness."

Susan jumped back into the jury box, and a young woman with short blond hair and unnerving dark eyes took the stand.

"State your name."

"Ashley Faye Walker Roberts."

Will, startled, looked hard at the woman. She wasn't much more than a girl. He could see a definite resemblance to his mother, not to mention Allie and Sydney.

"Who are your parents, Ashley?" asked Mickey.

"Technically, I don't have parents," said Ashley. "Technically, I don't exist in this reality. I was never born. But if I had been born, my parents would have been Samantha Brady and Brandon Walker."

"Tell us about your reality. Tell us why you weren't born."

"Where I come from, Mom married Dad—Brandon—while Lucas was in a coma. Right after they came home from Italy, when Will was a little boy." She smiled warmly at Will, but her warmth sent a rush of nausea through him. She knew him; he didn't know her. And yet, he somehow sensed that there had once been a possibility of knowing her. That chance, once close, was dizzyingly far out of his reach. "Mom was already pregnant with my sister Coley and me by the time the whole Will Doll thing went down."

"You have brothers and sisters, then?"

Ashley pointed at Will. "Will is my older brother. Not _this_ Will; _my_ Will is an artist, an architect. They're the same, and they're different, you know? I have a twin sister named Coley, and our little brother is James."

"Do you resent Will because you were never born? Do you blame him?"

"No!" Ashley's strange, dark eyes flashed with furious anger at the thought. "I can't believe anyone would even suggest that. There are billions and billions of possibilities. Everyone makes choices every second and every choice means one outcome instead of the others. If you got hung up thinking about the friend or boyfriend you might have had if you had just been looking in one direction instead of the other, you'd go crazy. So you love the people you're incredibly lucky enough to have in your life."

"You're aware of the assertion that when Will shot Elvis DiMera, he was wishing away the existence of his future sister, Sydney?"

"Yes. And it's silly. Sydney's existence counted on an almost infinite number of things going exactly right. So did mine. She won the lottery. I didn't."

"Your Honor," said Mickey, "I would like to point out that the previous witness's opinion that Will somehow endangered Sydney is just that—an opinion. I have now presented a witness with every reason to be angry or jealous, but she holds the opposite opinion. Can we cease presenting opinions as fact in this proceeding?"

Judge Horton the Tiger yawned. "Maybe. Do you have further questions for the witness?"

"One more. Ashley, you told me that your last name is Roberts. Why?"

"My Dad Lucas adopted Coley and me when he married Mom."

"Your Dad Lucas and your Mom are still together?"

"They've been happily married for fifteen years."

"You believe they belong together? That your mother would never choose anyone else over him if she had the chance?"

"Absolutely. They're soul mates. They really are. In my reality, in this reality, and in every other reality."

"Thank you."

And with that, Ashley faded into the grayness of non-existence. Will shivered.

Sydney called her next witness.

"State your name," said Judge Horton the Tiger.

"Bubba," said the muscled, tattoo-covered man.

"Tell us who you are, Bubba."

"I'm a mythological prison inmate. Everyone who goes to prison thinks he'll be paired up with me."

"Tell us about prison," said Sydney.

Bubba talked at great length about how awful it was.

"If Will was a good person, he wouldn't have allowed his father to go to prison in his place, correct?"

"Correct," said Bubba.

"I didn't know what Dad was doing! Not until it was over!" Will injected.

Bubba was unimpressed. "If you'd been stronger, he never would have felt like he had to do it. He wouldn't have been able to do it."

"Thank you, Bubba," said Sydney sweetly. Bubba vanished in the same way Ashley had.

Mickey rose to call another witness, but Judge Horton the Tiger raised a paw to hold him off. "The Court is ready to rule."

"What about us?" cried the twelve identical jurors.

"You annoy me," said Judge Horton the Tiger. He ate them, burped, and continued. "First, the Court would like to rule that Sami Brady and Lucas Horton are soul mates."

"The defense agrees with the Court's ruling, but Sami and Lucas' love wasn't on trial."

Judge Horton the Tiger yawned in Mickey's direction, spraying drops of blood on the table as he did. "I will make whatever rulings and findings of fact I wish. Does the prosecution object to that?"

Sydney perched daintily on the edge of her table. "The prosecution is willing to stipulate their status as soul mates. I did agree to help with the whole parent trap thing when Will asked me to."

Judge Horton the Tiger continued. "I further find that Lucas Horton took the blame for the shooting because he loved Will—his and Sami's child— so much that he couldn't stand the thought of him suffering or becoming a target of the DiMeras. We could just as easily say Will was so wonderful that he caused Lucas to lie as say Will was so weak that he caused Lucas to lie. On this count, I find Will Horton not guilty."

Mickey and Sydney both nodded.

"However, it is undisputed that Will Horton shot Elvis DiMera with intent to kill him. Because he was protected by his father's love, he will be punished with his love for his parents."

And with that, Will was in a patch of woods he recognized from a long ago school camping trip.

Will looked down at his body. He was twelve years old again.

A teacher was pulling at Will. "Get on the bus! We're leaving!"

"No!" Will screamed before he knew why.

"That tiger has been spotted. We have to get out of—"  
><em><br>"Not without my parents! They aren't here!"_ He wrenched himself free of grasping hands and ran deeper into the woods. At first he didn't know where he was going, but then Lucas' shouts guided him to the edge of a pit.

His eyes searched the darkness; finally, at the bottom of the pit, he saw light glinting off the rhinestones woven into Sami's hair. Sami was unconscious.

And Horton was there.

His judge's robes were gone; he was just a tiger, and he opened his jaws to maul Sami.

Lucas threw a rock at Horton. Horton's claws raked across Lucas' face.

Will searched for something, anything to distract Horton. Finding nothing, he threw himself at the tiger. But he made no impression; the tiger seemed not to notice him. His claws ripped into Lucas. His teeth ripped into Sami.

Will was ignored. Will could do nothing but watch.

As usual.

This had to be a dream, a nightmare. It was the only explanation.

A scream escaped his throat.

"It's all right, Will," said Sami's voice. She was dead and bleeding, but Will could hear her voice.

Her hand stroked through his hair and he opened his eyes.

He was back in his hospital room in Hong Kong and, as usual, Sami was at his side.

"Mom?"

"Everything's okay," Sami promised.

With a herculean effort, Will pulled himself up to throw his arms around Sami.

**  
>TBC<strong>


	14. Plan C

**Part 13**

Sami's heart was breaking because she knew Will's heart was breaking, and that was how it worked when a mother adored her son.

But at the same time, delight surged through her. Will loved her. Will wanted to see her. Will was looking to her for comfort. She was still important to Will.  
><em><br>This must be what it feels like to be Kate,_ she groaned inwardly. _Thinking your child's pain has a silver lining if it makes him need you._

She considered pulling away, but feeling Will solid and alive in her arms was something she was never, never going to give up voluntarily.

At last, she decided that as long as she never deliberately made Will feel this way, she was safely removed from the Kate Roberts Method.

"Want to tell me what you dreamed?" she asked, like she had dozens of times when Will had been a small boy. "It might not seem so bad if you say it out loud."

Will chuckled, then winced as pain shot up his leg. Sami reluctantly released him from the hug and helped him get settled sitting up in bed.

Lucas entered and deposited two cups of coffee on the table beside the bed. Sami appreciated the thoughtfulness, but lamented Lucas' timing. She wished that he could have waited a few more minutes to return.

Then, long seconds after Sami had dismissed the idea that Will might tell her what he had dreamed, Will asked. "Remember Horton the tiger?"

"Your Mom and I lead pretty exciting lives," said Lucas with half a grin, "But the time we got chased around by my cousin's tiger still tends to stand out."

"That's what I was dreaming about. Horton."

"What, that time at the circus?" asked Sami.

"No," said Will. "The other time. Remember my school camping trip that ended early because Horton decided to join in? The teachers almost left the two of you there because you were off doing… whatever."

Sami and Lucas exchanged a smile of shared remembrance. "Yeah, I think I might remember that," said Sami. "Between the tiger and your friend's pet snake somehow ending up in our tent…"

"I don't know how that could have happened," said Will with a straight face.

"Right," said Lucas. He moved to punch Will on the arm and at the last minute remembered where they were and why. He settled for a caress. "You know, the twins spent the past week trying to give you a run for your money."

"They did?"

"We were camping with the two of them when we got the news about you." Sami picked up where Lucas had left off. "They gave us the full parent trap treatment. Walkie-talkie hidden in our tent to spy on us. Fake medical crisis with Johnny's eye. Manipulative campfire stories."

"How'd they get you to go camping together to begin with?" asked Will.

"All they would have had to do was ask!" said Sami sharply.

Will snorted, and Sami almost told him—grown as he was—that he shouldn't be so disrespectful. But his pain-lined face was as pale as the white wall behind him, so she held her tongue. Will heard what she did not say.

"You haven't been on the same continent for what, five years? Not since Dad dragged Allie and me off to Hong Kong?"

"I'd like to think of that as taking the two of you to the home your mother and I thought would be best for you at that particular point in time," said Lucas.

Will ignored him. "How did they get you to go camping together?" he repeated.

Sami sighed. "They didn't tell us. They secretly arranged to go to the same summer camp—which they still won't admit to doing, they swear it was a coincidence or fate or something—"

Will groaned and closed his eyes.

Instantly, Sami and Lucas were hovering over him, asking where it hurt and debating whether they should call for the doctor without Will's say-so.

"I'm fine," Will told them.

"You don't look fine, Bud."

Will brushed off the concern. "I'd just forgotten—I didn't realize it had even worked."

Suddenly, Sami and Lucas didn't look quite so concerned. Their eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What worked?" asked Sami.

"Oh, I suggested the same camp to Allie and Johnny. I thought it would be nice if they could spend a summer together. They're twins, after all. But I didn't know if they'd both taken the hint."

"And you also thought it would be nice if your mother and I were on the same continent?"

Will shrugged, then cringed with real pain. "I don't know. It's a compulsion. I started doing that kind of thing when I was so young that even after I realized that it wasn't my place to decide if you two should be together, sometimes I would say something or do something before I realized I'd done it. Even though I knew that it was too hard for you, that you had been through too much to try again even if you loved each other."

Rather than touch that declaration with a ten foot pole, Sami reached into her purse and found her phone. "I suppose we should apologize to the twins for accusing them of lying about planning the camping trip from the beginning."

"Hey, were you ever able to reach Sydney?" wondered Lucas.

"No." Sami shifted her attention back to Will. "You wouldn't have told Sydney to try to keep us from finding out if Johnny and Allie were at the same camp, would you have?"

Will closed his eyes again.

"About that…" he began.

* * *

><p>Johnny gave Sydney an affectionate hug as soon as she, Doug, and Julie arrived at the front door. Sydney and Allie felt more awkward; they had barely seen each other since babyhood. But they hugged anyway because it seemed like the thing to do.<p>

Doug and Julie, after dispatching the baby-sitter, beamed at them.

"You're all so beautiful," Julie told them. She pulled out her phone and gestured that Johnny should put his arms around his sisters. They smiled for the camera as she took what seemed like hundreds of photographs.

"We haven't been able to get in touch with your parents," Doug said. "As soon as we do, we'll see about visiting Will, or at least getting the three of you a chance to experience Hong Kong together."

"Maybe we should go to the hospital and surprise them," said Allie guilelessly.

Julie moved so that her face was inches away from Allie's. "Do you think that I haven't spoken to your parents at all since that stunt you pulled at your summer camp?"

"Well, _now_ we don't," quipped Johnny.

The corner of Julie's mouth quirked up, and she stepped back to allow her gaze to include Johnny.

"Doug and I brought your sister here because we agreed with you that it was the easiest solution while your parents handled the situation with Will. We will not, however, fall in line with whatever plans you may have for your parents."

Allie sized up the situation quickly. She determined that the best way to handle Julie would involve honesty and a bit of flattery. "How come we keep getting caught?" she asked Julie with what she hoped was a winning twinkle in her eye.

"Because you keep trying to kid a kidder, my darling Alice. Your parents were always up to something long before you were born. And I was always up to something long before your parents were born."

"Then maybe we should learn from you?" suggested Allie.

"That can be arranged," said Julie drily.

"Maybe you can start by explaining why Mom and Dad split Johnny and me up instead of sharing us if it wasn't because they were afraid that if they were in the same room they'd get back together."

Julie sighed and looked at Doug. "I don't suppose Lucas has any alcohol in this place, does he?"

"He keeps it for guests in the very top cabinet in the kitchen," chimed in Allie helpfully.

"I'll keep it in mind. Why don't you help your sister settle in?"

And with that, Doug and Julie vanished into the next room.

"You think I went too fast with Julie?" asked Allie as she, Johnny, and Sydney dragged Sydney's suitcase into Allie's room.

"Doesn't matter," Sydney piped up. "You did what you did, and now you can only decide what to do next."

Allie watched the smaller girl out of the corner of her eye. She wasn't quite sure what to make of her.

Johnny, naturally, had no such confusion. "What are you doing, Syd?" he asked.

"I'm opening my suitcase," Sydney said. She removed a stuffed animal and propped it in Allie's window sill where she could admire it.

"Why did you cover for us? Why did you cover up that we were at the same camp? How did you even know to do it?"

Sydney picked up the toy again, then set it down again. She was obviously giving careful consideration to what to say.

"Will told me to," she blurted out. "Right before he went away, he called and said to hide it if I could. But he said to hide it from Mommy and Lucas, not from you."

Allie snapped her fingers in realization. "Did Will suggest Camp Canobie to you?" she asked Johnny.

"I don't remember."

"I think he did to me. Wow, that finally makes sense." Allie's face fell. "So it wasn't fate that made us come together. It was Will." She gritted her teeth. "We should so get him. But you can't get someone who's in the hospital."

"We can worry about that later. Mom and Dad are enough to worry about now." Johnny and Allie both turned to Sydney. "Are you on board? Really?" Johnny asked.

Sydney nodded firmly. "I like Lucas. I think we should all live together and have a Daddy."

Johnny held out his hand; Allie put hers on top; and Sydney followed. "Parent Trap continues! Break!" whispered Johnny.

They all cheered—but quietly, so Doug and Julie wouldn't hear them.

**TBC**


	15. A Final Reunion

**Part 14**

When Will had fallen asleep again, Lucas and Sami watched him through the window, as had become their custom.

"It never occurred to me that Will might have been the one behind this stuff with the twins and Sydney," said Sami, half-weary and half-amused. "What about you?"

"Me?" Lucas puffed out his chest. "Of course. I know those kids like the back of my hand. I meant to mention to you that this had Will's fingerprints all over it."

"Really?"

Lucas deflated, laughing. "No. I'm as surprised as you."

Sami swatted at him playfully. "I feel like I should have known. _We_ should have. All those years it was just you and me and Will—"

"And Brandon, Austin, EJ, Rafe—"

"Carrie, Nicole, Chloe, Manda—"

"I'm flattered that you remember Manda. _I_ barely remember Manda."

"Lucky you," said Sami. "Skank," she murmured under her breath.

"It was all about you," Lucas was surprised to hear himself say. "She might have been a nice girl, but I never really took the time to find out. I never would have bothered having anything to do with her if I hadn't wanted to show you that someone else could want me. I wanted to see you get jealous. I wanted to see if I was on your mind as much as you were on mine." He grinned sheepishly. "It's been a recurring theme in my life. Not being able to stop thinking about you."

Sami leaned against the glass. "I know the feeling."

"You can't stop thinking about you, either? Don't be so hard on yourself."

Sami didn't take the bait or acknowledge the joke. "You. I couldn't stop thinking about you. When I was with Brandon. When I was with Austin. And I know you've made it clear that you don't want to hear it, but that night with EJ—that was all about me being sad and angry that you weren't there, and doing something to piss you off as much as you pissed me off."

"Sami, you're an all time expert in pissing me off. You had a thousand ways to do it, everything from having a food fight with my mother to playing a song I couldn't stand. I gave it right back to you. That's how we were. But you were never, never the kind of person who would have sex with someone without it meaning something. You weren't like me. You wouldn't do it just because it felt good—felt good physically or felt good because it pissed me off. That wasn't you. Sex always meant something to you."

"Usually. But that time was different. The first time, EJ took my choice away from me. After that, I did every selfless thing I could to protect out family, and it wasn't enough. I ended up with nothing: you in prison, Will in Europe, sharing Johnny with a man I never agreed to make a baby with. I was overwhelmed and I did something self-destructive." She looked at Lucas with a challenge in her eye. "Are you going to tell me that doing something impulsive and self-destructive isn't like me?"

Lucas' hand gently cupped the side of Sami's face. "Maybe once," he told her. "But you've been terrific these past few days. You've been great with Will and Allie and Johnny. You've raised Johnny and Sydney all by yourself, and they're amazing. You've had to step back from Will and Allie when you didn't want to, but you did it anyway because it was the right thing. There hasn't been any drama, not Sami-created drama, anyway."

"I think our children might disagree." She spoke in a whisper, but Lucas still felt her breath on his cheek. He knew he should have taken his hand off of her face by now, but he didn't. It felt right where it was. Sami made no effort to remove it, either. "What did Will even mean in there?" she continued. "When he said that too much happened for us to be together even if we loved each other?"

Lucas didn't answer. He couldn't. He couldn't do anything but imagine a life that had Sami in it all day every day.

Then Sami leaned over and kissed him, gently and swiftly, on the lips. She pulled away and searched his face for a reaction.

But before Lucas could say anything, they heard a shout echoing down the next corridor over.

_"Room 1422! The sign says that way!"_

Lucas and Sami jumped apart.

"How the hell did Johnny get away from the baby-sitter?" Lucas asked.

_"Don't yell! They'll hear us coming!" _

"Same way Allie did," said Sami wryly.

Lucas held a hand to his lips and pulled Sami behind the open door to the waiting room. Sami nodded knowingly.

The twins rounded the corner, skipping and giggling, subtle as a pair of young elephants. They shushed each other as they peeked into Will's room; Johnny spun in a circle and nearly toppled to the ground as he looked for his parents.

"Maybe they went to the gift shop or the cafeteria."

"Maybe they went home to get us."

"Maybe they're talking to a doctor somewhere?"

"Maybe they finally realized they're still in love and went off to have a romantic candlelit dinner!"

Lucas and Sami sprang out from behind the door. Lucas grabbed Allie, who shrieked with surprise; Sami grabbed Johnny, who laughed as she tickled him.

"Maybe they were just waiting to catch their nosy twins sneaking away from the baby sitter!" Sami told them.

"You know, I think that's it!" Lucas congratulated Sami. "That must be what they were doing."

"We're grounded again, aren't we?" asked Allie resignedly.

Lucas hugged her more tightly. She felt fresh and lively and bright after long, dreary days spent round the clock in the hospital. "We'll see," he told her.

"How did you get past security without an adult?" Sami asked Johnny.

Johnny and Allie exchanged a conspiratorial smile. Sami and Lucas suppressed a unified groan.

After a moment's standoff, Allie grinned and pointed back the way that they had come. A tiny figure sauntered into view.

"Sydney?" Sami gasped. She flew down the hall and gathered the little girl into her arms. "I've missed you so much, sweetheart. How did you get here?"

Lucas, Johnny, and Allie slowly followed in Sami's wake. Allie giggled at the stunned expression on Lucas' face. "You aren't _always_ one step ahead," she informed him.

"That's what I'm worried about," Lucas admitted. "Hi, Sydney," he greeted. Sydney offered him a firm handshake; he fell to his knees and kissed her hand instead. She didn't laugh like the twins would have. Instead, she gave him an appraising glance and nodded as if he had passed some sort of a test.

"How did you get through security?" Lucas asked all three children. "I want an answer this time."

"We told them that our ages added up to 26, and they decided that that was old enough to come in," said Allie.

"Allie."

Allie shrugged. "You said you wanted an answer. You didn't say it had to be the truth."

"It sounded like a good answer to me," Johnny volunteered.

"Stuff should work that way," Allie agreed.

Lucas felt his face tighten. He had needed to see the twins more than he knew, but the stress of the past week was shortening his temper. Allie had better bet she would be grounded again if she didn't give him a real answer the next time he asked.

The sound of a throat clearing stopped him before he got a chance. He and Sami turned to see Julie and Doug watching them with indulgent smiles on their faces.

"We tried to call, but your phones were off," Julie began before Lucas had completely registered her presence. "We told the children that surprising you at the hospital was a bad idea, but we couldn't reach you and we needed to check on you."

"You brought Sydney from Salem?" asked Sami.

Doug confirmed that they had.

"I don't know how to thank you—" Sami began. Doug and Julie waved her off.

"I know what it's like to be a parent worried about a child," Doug said. "And I know what a breath of fresh air children can be in a situation like this."

"How is Will?" Julie asked.

"Sleeping. But much better." Sami gestured toward the door. "You can sit with him if you want. Actually, why don't you? Give Lucas and me a few minutes with the twins and Sydney."

With that, Sami ushered her three younger children into a thankfully empty waiting area. She and Lucas extracted a few more details about Sydney's trip to Hong Kong and learned that the twins had already known about her impending arrival when they had last spoken on the phone.

The lecture about needing to let their parents know where they were for their own safety dragged on until Sami was sure that even Sydney—whose capacity to sit still and absorb what was said to her was the stuff of legend—was bored.

"Can you just tell us how long we're grounded for?" asked Johnny after a while. His sisters nodded in agreement.

"The thing is," said Lucas, "your mother and I also decided that we owe you an apology. Will told us that he was the one who set you up to go to camp together. That story you told us about seeing each other for the first time when you were playing Capture the Flag was true, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said the twins in unison.

"And we should have believed you, and we're sorry we didn't. Do you accept our apology?"

"Yes," the twins repeated.

"Since your cousin Julie and Doug agreed to take you down here, you don't need to be punished for that. So I think that if you remember not to go anywhere without permission, we'll let you off with time served."

Johnny looked questioningly at Allie.

"He means we aren't grounded any more," Allie said.

"Good. I thought so." Johnny grinned.

"You're going to go home now, but you can come back tomorrow. If Doug and Julie decide to take you somewhere fun, that's OK, but only if Allie can handle the responsibility of being the only one who speaks Cantonese. You have to do your best to be patient and translate as well as you can if they need you to."

"Mei jau," Allie agreed.

Lucas hugged her, and then Johnny, and then Sydney, because he couldn't very well leave Sydney out.

Sami did the same. "Seeing the three of you is the best thing that's happened to us all week," she told them. "Maybe tomorrow Doug and Julie will come and sit with Will, and we'll come and see you at home for a few hours."

"We'd like that," said Allie, and if it was odd that she excitedly squeezed Sydney's and Johnny's hands as she said it, Sami was too tired to notice.

**TBC**


	16. Plan D

**Part 15**

A lifetime of exotic travel hadn't made Julie immune to jet lag; not for the first time, she awoke in the middle of the night despite being exhausted. Beside her, Doug was snoring contentedly. She slipped out of bed and took her phone into the living room to check her messages and sort through the pictures she had not yet transferred to her family's shared online album.

She hesitated over the pictures she had taken of Allie, Johnny, and Sydney the day before.

The children were right. They didn't deserve to be strangers to one another.

Allie was probably right when she theorized that Lucas and Sami had split them up rather than face the reality of their own relationship. Julie had spent enough time with Lucas and Sami before and during their marriage to know their usual tricks.

"Good morning, Julie," Allie whispered.

_Think of the devil._ "Good morning, darling."

"Can I get you anything? Juice? Coffee? Or do you not want to wait for the others to start breakfast?"

Allie, Julie knew, was used to playing hostess for Lucas' business associates. It was disconcerting to see such a young child in that role, but it was the way Kate had raised Lucas. Of course Lucas would prolong the pattern without Sami and the other children around.

"No, thank you." Julie gestured to the seat beside her, and Allie bounded into it.

Julie winced just a little. She was almost—_almost_—too old for children and their bouncing.

"Do you think it's possible that my Mom and Dad belong together?"

Allie was direct and stubborn. Julie loved those things about her.

"I think it's very _likely_," Julie agreed.

"So if it's likely," Allie paused for emphasis, "How would it hurt anything to give them a chance to figure out? Doesn't everyone need a little help once in a while? Couldn't it be a random act of kindness?"

"It's not a random act of kindness if you benefit from it, too."

"OK, a calculated act of kindness."

Julie choked on her own laugh. "You have a lot of your great-grandma Alice in you. She never thought a little matchmaking was out of line. Your great-grandpa Tom would try to reign her in, and she would accuse him of not wanting her to have any fun."

A wistful expression crossed Allie's face. "I wish I'd known them. I mean, I met Grandma Alice but she was so old, and I was so young… all I could really do was sit next to her, and I don't remember it very well."

"I wish you had more memories of her, too. She was every bit as extraordinary as we all tell you she was. But the most amazing thing is how much she lives on in her great grandchildren. Especially you, Alice Caroline, and my Ciara Alice."

Allie shifted uncomfortably. "Mom worries about it. I mean, she worries about it going the other way with Sydney. Her grandfather was Stefano DiMera, and she's supposed to have his brains, so who knows what else she got?"

"That's absolutely not something any of you need to worry about," said Julie rather sharply. "I see Alice in you and your brothers and cousins because that's how powerful her love and goodness were. She touched people, and they touched other people, and that love got stronger instead of weaker. But hate doesn't work that way. When Stefano DiMera dies, no one will care. His actions killed most of his children, directly or indirectly. EJ isn't around to influence Sydney. She'll get Alice's love from your mother and your brothers and you. She's your Sydney, not Stefano's Sydney." Julie paused, remembering something she hadn't thought about in years. "Did you know that Sidney was your great great grandfather's name? Alice's father's name?"

"No." Allie considered that. "Maybe it's a sign. A sign that Mom and Dad and Will and Johnny and Sydney and me are all supposed to be a family."

"You are a family, _we_ are a family, whether your parents are together or not."

Allie rolled her eyes, then rushed back in before Julie could reprimand her. "Do you think great-grandma Alice would have thought it would be all right to give Mom and Dad a romantic date?"

That was an easy question. Alice had always believed that Lucas and Sami belonged together, and she had never hesitated to give romance a helping hand.

Julie sighed dramatically. She and Doug had planned to keep their opinions out of Lucas and Sami's mess and remain retired from family drama. But it was no use arguing with someone named Alice Horton.

Julie didn't even have to respond aloud before Allie's face lit with victory. "I was thinking you and Doug could go to the hospital to be with Will, and tell Mom and Dad that they need to come home to relax and have a real meal. But when they do, Johnny and Sydney and I aren't hungry. They'll just have to eat and look at each other in the candlelight and listen to romantic music all by themselves."

"That sounds simple enough," Julie admitted.

Allie nodded proudly. "Johnny says I try to make things too complicated, try to plan too much. But this should work."

Julie sighed again. "I'll help you with this, but I don't want you to convince yourself that it will make your parents fall into each others arms and decide to get remarried. It probably won't."

"But it might."

"That's a very small possibility."

"That's better than none." Allie shook off the warning, clearly sure that all Lucas and Sami needed was more time in the same room. "We'll get takeout from Tsim Chai Kee Noodle. They make the best shrimp wontons. Or maybe shrimp wontons aren't romantic?"

"I don't think that's a problem."

"Good. But I need help with the playlist. Sydney did a web search and downloaded the top ten most romantic songs—wait!" Allie bounded from the room and was back with a laptop before Julie could entirely register that she had left.

"See?" Allie pointed. "I guess they're all right, but they're… they're not special. Do you know any songs that are special for them?"

Julie smiled. "Did you know your father sang _When a Man Loves a Woman_ when he proposed to your mother?"

"Dad sang? Really?"

"He did. You need _Home to Me_, and that Whisky Falls song they played at their wedding. Something by Cherish; they met for the first time at a Cherish concert. But don't load up on those songs, or the really sappy romantic ones, at the beginning. We have to lure them into it slowly."

Allie's fingers flew across the keyboard.

As she finished, Julie added one final song. Allie looked a question at her. "Ask your father sometime, Darling," Julie said.

* * *

><p>"It took you a whole day to start interfering in Lucas and Sami's relationship," Doug said to Julie as the entered the hospital. "I'm impressed. You almost made it 24 hours."<p>

Julie shrugged easily, knowing that Doug didn't actually disapprove. "I couldn't argue with Allie any more. I'm too old for that."

Doug stopped and stared at Julie with mock-shock. "You? The most beautiful girl in the world? Too old? Never."

Julie laughed and linked her arm through Doug's. "We have been so lucky to spend our lives together. I never forget that, but sometimes something happens to make me feel it even more."

"And this time it was what? Will's accident or Allie's insistence on playing matchmaker for her parents?"

"Both. Neither. All those years ago, I saw so much of myself in Sami. Lately I've only seen her as a woman who settled for a good life because her last shot at a great life didn't quite work out. I'm not at all sure Lucas is really capable of forgiving her."

"Getting the image of Sami and EJ out of his mind can't have been easy, especially with Sydney out there memorializing the incident."

"If I can love your daughter who is also my half-sister, Lucas should certainly be able to figure out how to embrace an adorable fatherless stepdaughter. Forget that she represents anything. Forget that she's anything but a person." Julie returned.

"Are you planning to explain things to him that way?"

"If necessary."

Doug winced. "Maybe I'll just sit with Will while you send Lucas and Sami on their way. I wouldn't want to be caught in the crossfire."

"Well, I wasn't going to do it now. We'll wait and see how Allie's little date night pans out first."

Even though Julie, true to her word, made no mention of romantic entanglements as she firmly sent Lucas and Sami home, Doug drifted into Will's room by himself.

Will was wide awake, if subdued. "Hi, Doug." He reached out to shake Doug's hand. "Thanks for being here for my family. It really helps my parents not to have to worry about the kids so much."

Doug clasped Will's hand in both of his and gave it an extra squeeze. Will's skin was smooth with youth and calloused with long hours spent on the ocean. But there was fear and sadness and a kind of defeat in his grip. No wonder Lucas and Sami were so reluctant to leave Will alone.

"I think the kid your parents are worried about is you," Doug told Will.

"I'm not a kid," Will stated flatly.

"You'll always be their kid. Trust me on this one. Your cousin Hope has grandchildren of her own, and she's still my little princess."

Will considered that. "Does that make it all right for you to lie to her and take all of her choices away? Because she's your child?" It might have been the pain or the drugs or something else, but the filter between Will's mind and his lips had disappeared.

Doug hadn't expected such a bitterly serious response. He was fond of Will, but they weren't close and hadn't seen each other in years. Still, they were family.

"Your parents lied to you and took your choices away?" Doug repeated as nonchalantly as he could. A con man—even a reformed one—knew how to establish a sympathetic ear while buying time to plot his next move.

"Yeah. I tried to balance it out, thinking I deserved it because I did something awful. But the awful thing I did, nothing can balance it out. So I feel almost like I can get through my parents not being who I thought they were. That happens to everyone, right? But there's still the thing I can never make up for."

Just then, Doug caught sight of Julie just outside the room. He waved her off using only his eyes. Will did not need to be interrupted.

Julie blew Doug a kiss and stepped back into the waiting area.

"Did you kill someone in cold blood?" Doug asked Will.

"No."

"Did you commit treason?"

"No."

"Well, then." Doug patted Will's hand again. "Nothing you can't make up."

"You think those are the only two immoral things there are? Or just the only crimes?"

"The hardest ones to come back from. Do you know how I met your cousin Julie?"

To Doug's surprise, Will grinned. "You met my Grandpa Bill in prison, and when you came to Salem someone paid you to seduce Julie."

Will said it with such relish that Doug grinned, too. "So you do know."

"Back when the Salem Stalker was killing people and we thought you were dead, Julie used to show me pictures from your trips and tell me about them."

"That's right, she told me about that. It was good for her to have someone new to hear our story. You were always very kind, Will. I find it hard to believe that you can't redeem yourself for whatever you did."

"I shot EJ DiMera in the back, and my Dad took the blame and went to prison for me. He convinced me I didn't do it, when I did."

Relief flooded through Doug. "That's all? Half the family was aiming guns at EJ that day."

"That doesn't make it all right."

"Congratulations on not being perfect, then."

"Dad could have died in prison. He almost did. And it would have been my fault."

"Unfortunately, parents are like that. They'd rather die themselves than see any harm come to their children. If the DiMeras had decided that you were their new enemy…" Doug shuddered involuntarily. "No wonder Lucas did what he did. Hey, do you know why your Grandpa Bill was in prison when I met him?"

"No. That part always got left out of the story."

"He was protecting his family. He didn't want it known that he was Mike's father and Mickey wasn't. I think Lucas comes by his instincts honestly. They're good instincts."

"I guess." Will clenched his jaw. "You won't tell anyone what I told you? Since shooting a man in the back on his wedding day is barely worth mentioning?"

"It's our secret. But why did you tell me?"

"Because the doctors are going to let me go home with Mom and Dad soon. A couple of the breaks aren't as bad as they thought." Will held up a hand to keep Doug from responding. "If I have to be around them again, I have to be sure where I am. If you wanted to turn me in, everything would be over with. If you didn't, then maybe I should just get ready for a year of going to rehab and baby-sitting the twins and trying to be me again."

"I think that sounds like a plan," Doug agreed.

**TBC**


	17. The Date

**Part 16**

"I trust Doug and Julie—I really do," Sami said yet again as she and Lucas approached his apartment. "But Will's our son. We should be the ones with him."

"We'll have more time with him. Thank God." It was there, standing in the hallway outside his home, beside the only other person on the planet who knew what it was like to have Will Horton for a son, that reality caught up to Lucas. They had come so close to not having any more time with Will. Their desire to protect him had, ironically, led him into vicious icy waters that had been claiming lives for centuries.

Lucas couldn't see the neutrally ornate wallpaper, the dark patterned rugs, or the doorways leading to large, expensive apartments. All he saw was Will drowning in freezing water. For some reason, Will looked about six years old, all bright eyes and ears he hadn't quite grown into.

Lucas' knees threatened to buckle and he put one hand on the wall for support, just in case. He clenched his jaw, hard, to make sure he didn't cry. No need to freak out Sami, or one of the kids if they peeked into the hall.

"Lucas? Which door is it?" Sami asked. Lucas tried to gather the breath to tell her, but he wasn't fast enough. She turned around; concern was etched across her face. "Oh, Lucas," she breathed. "It's all right." She kissed his cheek and stroked his hair. "Will's fine. He's stubborn and tough, like you. I always used to say that I'd never get rid of you because you were a damn cockroach."

Lucas grasped onto the joke as hard as he could. "Yeah, you did say that."

"I also called you coma boy. And a sexual dyslexic."

"That Manda thing really got to you, didn't it?" Lucas' breathing had evened out. He was standing up straight again and thanking his lucky stars that Sami knew that this was the time to tease him back to functionality, not the time to tell him that she loved him and let him fall apart in front of the twins.

She knew him.

She loved him.

He loved her, too, but this wasn't the time or place.

"Me?" Sami was asking with mock surprise. "I never objected to your rolls in the hay with your brainless sluts. You were the one who practically stalked me. Remember when you locked Franco and me in that closet?"

"Just wanted to give you the gift of extended alone time. You never said thank you, by the way."

"Can't imagine how that slipped my mind."

He opened the front door and a wave of delicious smells washed over them both. It seemed that the twins and Sydney had ordered out— from Tsim Chai Kee Noodle, Lucas guessed. He had been so worried over Will that he had barely eaten for days, and now he was ravenous. He guessed that Sami must feel the same.

"Did you save us some?" he called into the disconcertingly quiet apartment. Allie usually greeted him with much fanfare. Now that there were three of her, there should have been three times as much tumult. But there was none.

"Twinners? Sydney?" Sami tried.

"Is it dark in here?" Lucas reached for a light switch; flipping it had no effect.

"Sorry about that." Lucas jumped at Allie's sudden appearance. "We blew a fuse, and the super says there's some kind of problem so we can't have power back for an hour or so."

"We've never had a problem like that before."

Allie shrugged bashfully. "It was Cousin Julie's hairdryer. It looked so fun, with all the buttons and everything, and I guess I shouldn't have tried it with the air conditioner running. I'm sorry."

"But a hairdryer can't use that much power." He was desperate to get to the food- smelling it without eating it was starting to make him sick- but he was sure Allie's story didn't quite work.

Sami shook her head. "It's really easy to blow a fuse with a hairdryer. It's amazing."

"I'm sorry," Allie repeated.

"Don't worry about it. We don't need the lights on to eat."

"We could just use candles." Sydney had followed Allie out of the quiet nowhere. "I found these." She placed two candles on the table. "Oh, I love those candles," said Allie enthusiastically.

The candles looked pretty ordinary to Lucas. There was no reason on earth that Allie should love them. Maybe she was just embarrassed at having blown the fuse and was looking to latch on to Sydney's solution?

Whatever the reason, it wasn't worth an argument. Lucas sat at the table and let Sydney light the candles under his close supervision. Sydney did so with real skill.

"You let your kids play with fire all the time, Sami?" he asked. "Is that how Sydney got so good at this?"

"Sydney, much like her mother, is naturally talented." Lucas smiled tiredly. It was nice to see Sami taking (deserved) credit for Sydney rather than worrying that every little thing the girl did was a sign that she would one day roam the world raping, torturing, and murdering.

"That's right," Sydney agreed. She pulled out the chair across from Lucas. "Sit down, Mom."

"Why don't you sit there, and I'll sit—"

Sydney shook her head. "We got hungry waiting for you and we ate already."

Lucas and Sami caught each other's eyes. So this was one more attempt by their children to reunite them. The excuse for the candlelight had been so well-conceived that Lucas had almost bought it.

"You got hungry and you already ate," Sami challenged Sydney.

"Yes," said Sydney flatly, as if she were unaware that Sami had done anything but asked for clarification.

"But we could eat more!" Johnny exclaimed delightedly as he bounded into the room carrying a platter of food. "The shrimp wontons are great."

Lucas looked quickly at the girls, but neither Allie nor Sydney gave the slightest sign that Johnny had interrupted any sort of plan by agreeing to join his parents. Allie just rolled her eyes. Maybe she had given up the scheme after all. Maybe everything was in Lucas' own head, which was spinning with exhaustion and fear and hunger and memories and the feel of Sami's lips on his cheek short moments before.

"I don't know how you can eat like that," Allie said to Johnny. "He already had, like, eight wontons, and fishballs and beef and noodles and—"

"He's a growing boy," Lucas told Allie. "Anyway, he can't have been the one who ordered this much food." However much Johnny had eaten, a generous amount remained. "Had to have been you."

"Whatever." Allie nudged Sydney. "Want to learn more Cantonese?" Sydney nodded. "Sihk faahn," Allie said. "Enjoy your meal."

"Sihk faahn," Sydney repeated.

The two girls trotted off to Allie's bedroom. A moment later, Lucas heard music playing; some unobtrusive, instrumental thing he vaguely recognized.

Johnny plopped down happily at the table and chattered about how much better the food was than the kind they got from the Chinese place in downtown Salem.

"That same one?" Lucas asked Sami. "The one Will used to love so much?"

Sami nodded. "It hasn't changed at all. Same booths, same fish tank, same pictures on the wall."

"You used to go there with Will?" Johnny asked, his mouth full of shrimp.

"A long time ago," Lucas agreed. "We used to take him there the day after he came back from camp because he missed it so much if he was gone for the summer."

He didn't tell Johnny about the time they'd taken Will there to tell him that his parents were engaged to be married.

A wistful smile crossed Sami's face. She remembered, too. Of course she remembered. It had been a big deal. They had grown apart and lived separate lives, but they hadn't forgotten.

Now they were together again at a different table with different worries and a different young boy looking at them eagerly.

Johnny was strange but familiar to Lucas. He was more outgoing and less serious than Will had ever been. He certainly lacked Will's unnatural maturity. Johnny was, in all ways, a child; Will had never really been one.

But Lucas knew that Johnny had depths and wounds that didn't show. As much as Will had been aware of his father's flaws, he had never believed that his father would fail to put him first. Johnny had gone through cancer treatments and two ersatz fathers. He had gone years without seeing Lucas. Lucas hadn't fought for him and hadn't been there, day in and day out. Johnny was never going to shatter over something Lucas had done, because Johnny didn't have the expectations that Will had had.

Whether Johnny realized it or not, he was used to Lucas putting himself first.

Allie had been right. If Lucas and Sami had truly been thinking of the twins, they would have found a way to raise them together instead of splitting them up. But Lucas hadn't been willing to do anything together with Sami. He had known that she would lead him into disaster again and that he would always, always follow.  
><em><br>When a man loves a woman  
>Deep down in his soul<br>She can bring him such misery_

Lucas shivered. The girls' quiet music had been drowned out by Johnny's conversation and Lucas' own thoughts. But this song was one he always noticed. Any time he heard it, he was dragged back to the day he had proposed to Sami. The lyrics were fitting. It was a classic love song, but it wasn't about the happy part of love. It was about aching vulnerability, about begging someone not to destroy your heart once it was given.

_Baby, please don't treat me bad…_

Don't leave me and our children to tag along after the man who raped you. Don't string me along, don't make me second-best again. Don't do the one thing you knew would hurt me the most.

Johnny finished his second dinner and joined his sisters in the next room.

"I almost told him to make them turn the music off," Sami murmured as Johnny escaped their earshot.

"You think they chose that song on purpose? They knew what it meant?"

_Isn't it funny how the roads just pass us by  
>Isn't it crazy how we never get it right…<em>

Sami raised an eyebrow. "You still want an answer?"

Lucas reached for the nearest lamp. The lightbulb had been oh-so-slightly unscrewed; as soon as he touched it, the lamp lit up.

"They didn't blow a fuse?"

"Not so much, no."

Sami laughed. "Leave it off. I like the candlelight."

Lucas obeyed. "When Johnny stayed and ate with us, I thought maybe it wasn't a setup after all."

"Red herring, apparently. They're getting more sophisticated. Subtler."

"They're getting help." Lucas pointed at the bedroom from which Josh Kelley's voice was emanating. "Unless you've been telling them about our past in excruciating detail."

"Julie."

"Of course Julie. It was her damn idea to have me sing _When a Man Loves a Woman_ in the first place."

"_Damn_?" Sami sounded hurt. "It was romantic. I'd never felt more special, or loved, and everyone there thought you were amazing. It's… it's still one of my most special memories."

"It didn't work out."

"Yes, you broke off that engagement when your mother stripped me naked and dumped me in bed with Brandon Walker. You believed her instead of me."

"I apologized," said Lucas more irritably than he'd meant to.

"And I apologized for getting into bed with EJ when you dumped me again. So if apologizing makes it all better—"

"I betrayed you. I know that. But your betrayal—"

"Fine, it was bigger. I ended up shooting EJ in the head. That's a little better than 'I'm sorry, let's get married after all,' right?"

"It doesn't even matter," Lucas muttered.

"Sure, it doesn't matter when I win."

"Nobody won, Sami." Lucas nodded meaningfully in the direction of the children.

"For God's sake, Lucas," Sami hissed. "Forgive me, or don't forgive me, but don't act like you didn't kiss me yesterday. Don't act like you haven't been eyeing me up since the second you saw me on the camping trip. If we're over because I'm this horrible person who does these unforgivable things you're too perfect to even contempl—"

Lucas kissed Sami.

It had always been the best way to shut her up.

As he pulled away, the music changed again.

_I'll be loving you, always  
>With a love that's true, always...<em>

"So it wasn't enough for Julie to interfere. She had to get Gran to help her out from beyond the grave."

Lucas could almost hear his grandmother's command, accompanied by a meaningful glance at whoever she thought needed a push. "I want to see the couples dance. There's nothing as beautiful as a couple finding their way back to each other and expressing their love that way."

He held out his hand to Sami. "Would you like to dance?"

Sami, stunned silent for once in her life, took his hand and leaned against him as they swayed slightly to the music.  
><em><br>Not for just an hour,  
>Not for just a day,<br>Not for just a year,  
>But always.<em>

_I'll be loving you, always  
>With a love that's true, always.<br>When the things you've planned  
>Need a helping hand,<br>I will understand, always._

_Always._

He hadn't, though. No matter how many times Sami tried to explain it—her need to make amends for her past behavior, her desire to protect him and their children, her anger at him for going to prison and breaking up with her—he had never quite understood how she could throw their family away.

Dancing with her to a song that had been his family's anthem for almost a century didn't change that.

_Days may not be fair, always,  
>That's when I'll be there, always.<em>

She hadn't been there. She had been with EJ. When he'd asked her to testify that she'd driven him to shoot EJ, she'd refused.

She was here now. She was a rock for their children. She'd been a rock for him. She knew when to make him laugh and when to let him cry. She knew how to tuck her body against his so it fit perfectly.  
><em><br>Not for just an hour,  
>Not for just a day,<br>Not for just a year,_

She knew that he'd gone to bed with a rockstar who didn't know his name. She knew his mother had lied to him about his father. She knew the whole ugly story of his alcoholism. She knew the immoral, desperate things he'd done to try to make a woman who didn't want him change her mind. She knew he'd turned a blind eye to his mother's attempts at murder. In fact, she knew altogether too much about his relationship with his mother.

_But always._

He loved her.

He loved her too much not to take the risk. Letting this chance pass would be worse agony than another broken heart.

"I love you," he whispered against her hair.

"I love you, too."

_Not for just an hour,  
>Not for just a day,<br>Not for just a year,  
>But always.<em>

**TBC**

**Auxiliary Disclaimer: **All songs quoted have been used on Days of Our Lives for Lumi and/or the Horton Family. "When a Man Loves a Woman" was written by Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright which was recorded by Percy Sledge, whose version was played over the Lumi montage when Lucas proposed to Sami for the third time. "Home to Me" was written and performed by Josh Kelley, and if you've never seen the scene where Lucas and Sami first danced to it, get thee over to YouTube right now. "Always" was written by Irving Berlin, and Days usually just has Bill Hayes sing it.


	18. Finale

**Part 17**

Sami's eyes filled with tears as soon as she opened them and saw Lucas lying on the bed next to her.

She had long since given up hope that this would ever happen again. She had almost convinced herself that she didn't care; if his problem was Sydney's existence, well, she didn't want him anyway.

But she _had_ wanted him. She had always wanted him, except for when she had hated him. There was really no in between with them. There was no way they could have been good friends, loving each other but not in love, raising their children together. Allie had been absolutely right about that. If Lucas hadn't fled to the ends of the earth, Sami would have done it.

Now they were together again, and it scared Sami to death. This time, it wasn't just her and Lucas and Will. This time, if things fell apart, there were six of them who would suffer. She was old. She was tired. She couldn't survive losing Lucas again. She definitely couldn't survive giving up Allie again, because of course Allie would choose to stay with Lucas and she would get Johnny, unless Johnny blamed her the way Will had at that age, and then she'd lose both twins…

Right now she could kiss Lucas if she wanted to. She could kiss him until he woke up and run her hands through his hair. She could tell him she loved him and hear him say it back. She could wrap her arms around him and breathe him in. It would be so easy to fall into him.

It would be brutal to do all of that only to have it stop, abruptly, because he didn't want her any longer. She had never chosen to let him go, never; he had always been the one to end things. He'd broken their first engagement because Kate had drugged her and planted her in bed with Brandon. He'd broken their next engagement over the Stan the Man thing, even though Sami had only done that to get back at the people who had destroyed them the first time. And he'd ended their marriage—OK, she'd asked for the divorce, but she'd never meant for it to be more than name only—by a damn email from prison.

She wasn't going to do that again. She wasn't going to try to get over Lucas by sleeping with a man who only wanted to hurt her, or by suggesting a relationship of second-best to a man who wanted her sister, or by dressing in drag and dealing drugs.

She wasn't going to get over Lucas because she wasn't going to get _under_ Lucas—not literally or metaphorically.

She crept off the bed, took a shower, changed her clothes, and had breakfast with the twins and Sydney. She called Doug and Julie, who assured her that Will was doing much better.

When Lucas joined her, he tried to catch her eye over the children's heads. She didn't let him.

When they made their way to the hospital, she refused to discuss anything but plans for Will's release. Will was ready to go home sooner rather than later, after all, and they needed to talk about accessibility and physical therapy and ways to fill the hours of his day when he was too weak to move much but strong enough to be bored.

Eventually, Lucas stopped hinting that maybe they should discuss the previous night. From then on, they both acted like nothing had happened. That made Sami even more sure that she was doing the right thing. They didn't work together, and he knew it as well as she did. Round four—or was it round four hundred?— wouldn't be practical and it wouldn't be fair.

The next few days were a flurry of seeing Doug and Julie off and helping Will move into Lucas' home.

Privately, Sami was also making preparations to return to Salem with Johnny and Sydney. She didn't want to expose herself to the triple threat of Allie's pouting, Johnny's screaming, and Sydney's I'm-so-disappointed-in-you looks. She didn't want to give Lucas a chance to try to change her mind.

She _really_ didn't want Lucas to have a chance to change her mind, and decline to take it.

Two days after Will was released from the hospital, Sami told Johnny and Sydney to pack their bags.

"Where are we going?" Johnny asked. He sounded as if he honestly had no idea, and Sami felt a pang of guilt. She knew what it was like to be a child and be completely blindsided by a parent's life-altering decision.

"We're going back to Salem." She ruffled his curly hair.

"We're all going back to Salem?" asked Sydney, and there was the boy-are-you-stupid undertone, right where Sami had known it would be. "Because University Hospital has the best rehab program for Will, and you'd never split us up again, right?"

"We've been over this." Sami looked from Johnny to Sydney. Both of them were glaring at her. "Our life is in Salem, and Allie and your dad have a life here."

"I'm not leaving my twin!" Johnny's voice got louder with every word. "ALLIE!"

Allie flew into the room; Lucas followed, and Will, too, on crutches.

"Allie, she says we're leaving now," Johnny's words tumbled over each other.

"We're doing what?"

"Not _you_, she's leaving _you_ here."

"Johnny!" Sami snapped, but before she could correct his choice of words, Allie stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Tell me again how you love all your children equally."

"Allie—honey—" Sami tried, and failed, to keep the frantic note out of her voice. "You know I'd love to have you come live with us. The last time I suggested it, you told me off in Mandarin."

"People in Hong Kong don't speak Mandarin," said Allie coldly, ice to Johnny's fire. "We speak Cantonese. But I guess it's not worth it to you to bother to know anything about me, is it?"

"I have to hand it to you, Allie, you know when to go for the jugular," Sami said to buy herself time while inwardly berating herself because of course she knew which language Allie spoke.

"So do you," said Allie with a sarcastic gesture of acknowledgment.

"Why don't you help your brother and sister pack?" Lucas directed Allie.

Sami looked at him gratefully, but he looked back at her with a disgust that reflected Allie's.

"I'm not going to help them pack, because I don't think they should be packing." She stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door.

"Johnny," Sami began.

_"No! I won't! You want to leave, you leave! I'm staying here," _he shouted.

"Johnny, school starts next week," she tried to reason.

_"I'll go to school with Allie."_ Johnny's voice bounded off the walls. _"I'm not leaving."_

"You will go and pack right now, or you can wait for your father to send everything you have, unless he decides to throw it out."

Johnny folded his arms and sat down. The message was clear: he wouldn't move unless Sami made him move. It had been years since Johnny had thrown a full-blown temper tantrum, but he hadn't forgotten how.

Sami called a cab, grabbed her own bag, and, with some tacitly disapproving help from Lucas, wrestled Johnny out the door. Sydney walked along like a robot. Allie didn't come out of her room. Will called goodbye over his shoulder.

For a fraction of a second, Lucas and Sami were alone beside the cab. Sami's breath quickened and her heart began to pound.

"I wish you hadn't done that," said Lucas in a low voice.

"Yeah?" said Sami dizzily. Some part of her brain gleefully chose to hear_ I wish you hadn't decided to leave, because I love you and I would never let you go again, and I could never go back to the life I had before you came back to me. You're wonderful and beautiful and home to me. _

"… Allie is really sensitive. She does better when you give her some warning instead of springing something big on her. And Will, under the circumstances, maybe he wanted some time to think about what he said to you before you left…"

Sami sighed as she tuned back in to what Lucas was really saying. Their kids, of course. Always the kids. Nothing about how he didn't want her to go, because he'd always been able to let her go or throw her away.

"You're right," Sami said, because Lucas loved being right more than anything else in the world. "I'll apologize to them when we get settled in at home."

She couldn't delay any longer; the driver was eying Johnny warily in his rearview mirror. She jumped into the car just in time to grab Johnny's arms as he attempted to open the door and make a break for it.

She never actually said goodbye to Lucas. That fit, somehow.

* * *

><p>"She didn't even say goodbye," Lucas whispered under his breath. That was Sami, though—always busy with the next thing, whether it was a new scheme to supplant the old one or a new husband to take the place of the previous one. Sami might say "I love you," and she'd even mean it when she said it. But she wouldn't mean it the next day; she hadn't meant it the next day.<p>

And now he was alone with Allie, who was experiencing for the first time since babyhood what it was like to be dumped by Sami Brady, and Will, who was barely on his feet, physically and otherwise.

To his relief, Allie had voluntarily emerged from her room while he'd been downstairs. Her flushed, tear-stained cheeks made a frightening contrast to Will's pained, pale face as they sat side by side on the couch.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know she was going to do that," Lucas told them.

Neither Allie nor Will said a word. The silence stretched beyond Lucas' comfort level. He wasn't used to silence, not having had any since his arrival at Camp Canobie.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded at last.

"I wanted you to tell Johnny he could stay," Allie said. "Mom said I could go with her. Why didn't you let Johnny stay?"

"Johnny didn't really want to stay," Lucas said.

Allie looked pointedly at the table that had been knocked over when they'd wrestled Johnny out the door. "That's what you think he said?"

"If he decides that he wants to come back when he's been in Salem for a while, we'll discuss it then."

"Like Mom discussed things this time?"

"She's sorry."

"And you?" asked Will quietly. Lucas jumped at the sound of Will's voice.

"I told you, I didn't know that she was planning to leave today."

"And when you found out, you just let her go?"

Lucas forced a laugh. "She's an adult, Will. She can go wherever she wants."

"Did you ask her to stay?"

"She's an adult," Lucas repeated. "She left because she wanted to leave."

"She likes to be asked," Will said. "Most people do, but Mom especially. Whatever happened between the two of you to freak her out, after that happened, did you ask her to stay?"

"She wouldn't let me, all right? She wouldn't talk to me."

"So you didn't."

Will left it at that. Again, Will and Allie let their silence fight their battle. Lucas never would have had this problem if he'd had Johnny in the house.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked them. "Chase them down at the airport and beg them to stay?"

Allie bounced to her feet so quickly that Lucas jumped back. "Yes! Let's go right now. We have to catch them before they get through security."

She scrambled into the next room and collected his car keys and wallet and her little purse.

"What am I supposed to do?" Lucas whispered to Will.

Will shrugged. "You could show her that sometimes you take risks, and sometimes it's worth trying to fix something that went wrong. Or you can tell her that everyone gets exactly one chance to get things right, so you won't be going after all."

"Allie is nine years old," Lucas hissed. "She doesn't get a vote on where her brother lives or whether her parents are together. Sami and I don't even…"

Will crossed his arms and looked amused. "Go on. But remember that I saw the two of you together when I was in the hospital. You and Mom want to be together, same as you always did, and neither one of you wants to admit it, same as always, because you're afraid of being vulnerable."

"You haven't changed either." Lucas stood up and grabbed a wheelchair from the corner of the room. "Still dipping into the psychology books in your spare time." He shoved the wheelchair at Will. "Come on. You can't do the airport on crutches."

Will grinned. It was the first real smile Lucas had seen on his face in years.

* * *

><p>Johnny stopped screaming and making escape attempts soon after they arrived at the airport. Sami guessed that he was merely regrouping for a surprise attack later, but she didn't care. She was going to take her rest where she could get it. She certainly wasn't going to let go of his hand to produce their passports and boarding passes when they reached the front of the line. Sydney, though, could be trusted to stand still; it was her hand that Sami dropped.<p>

"Sydney, run! Please!"

"Don't you dare!" Sami snapped, but it was too late. No child in the history of the world had ever chosen to obey a parent over a sibling.

Sydney ran.

Sami lunged after her, and almost caught her, too. Sydney's legs were short, and she wasn't a natural runner the way Johnny was. But Johnny was dragging Sami back, and Sydney was scooting through tiny gaps in the crowd where Sami couldn't follow.

Sami pulled Johnny around the back of the line, and they headed Sydney off. But when Sami exerted all of her strength to grab Sydney, Johnny slipped his hand from hers and took off as fast as he could.

"_Johnny_!" she shouted in her most no-nonsense voice. She had never been so furious with this child in his entire life.

"_Johnny_!" her own voice echoed, but it sounded gleeful, jubilant, youthful.

She hesitated, unnerved.

Sydney took advantage and sprinted after Johnny.  
><em><br>"You're supposed to run the other way!" _Sami shouted. _"That's the whole point of outnumbering me, you go in opposite directions!" _She and Eric had certainly known that as soon as they could walk.

_Do you really think now is a good time to give them scheming tips, Sami?_ she asked herself. Deciding that it was not, she jogged after them. She lost sight of them for a moment and sped up; she didn't want to think about the trouble they could get into if they tried to make it back to Lucas' place.

She stopped dead when she saw them. It hadn't been her own voice she'd heard calling Johnny; it had been Allie's. The twins had collapsed to the floor in a giggling, tangled embrace. Sydney, meanwhile, had perched breathlessly on Will's lap and was toying with the side of his wheelchair. They'd been apart for an hour and were having a raucous reunion.

"Lucas?" Her blood was rushing so many places so quickly that she could barely see him. "Lucas, what's going on? What are you doing here?"

She noticed that she was wringing her hands- it had been a stressful morning- but before she could stop herself, Lucas had closed his fingers over hers.

"Things got a little crazy this morning, so I didn't get a chance to ask... to ask you if you'd like to stay?"

"Stay?" asked Sami numbly.

"Yeah." Lucas smiled ever-so-slightly. "I'd like you to stay, so just in case you were leaving because no one asked you, I'm asking. Stay a little longer."

"How much longer?"

"I was thinking forever, to start with."

"To start?"

"But if you don't want to, we won't-"

Sami grabbed Lucas and kissed him hard. A few dozen travelers stopped and stared.

"That's a yes?" Lucas asked when they broke apart.

"I don't think I could look the security people in the face again, anyway. They probably have Johnny listed as a terrorist at this point."

Lucas shook his head. "I'm not asking you to stay for Johnny, or the other kids."

"That's good. Because I'm only agreeing to stay because," and she whispered in his ear _"you're really hot."_

"That's true," Lucas agreed. "I am."

"Lucas!"

"Also, I love you."

"Love you, too. Always have. Always will."

The crowd around them was applauding now. The twins had produced a hat from somewhere and were collecting coins from an appreciative audience.

"You two can think about how you'll spend that while you're grounded. Again," Sami told them.

Allie sighed theatrically. "You get me in a lot of trouble," she told Johnny.

"You like it that way," Johnny told her.

Lucas clapped Johnny on the shoulder. "It does run in the family."

**The End**


End file.
